2.1
Avg Impact (Meets 3.0)
2.0
Avg Critical Event
2.9
Avg Decision
3.5
Avg Pain
93/105
Deals below Meets on Impact
104/105
Deals flagged at risk
SPICED radar
Team average against the Meets benchmark of 3.0.
Where the team is behind the standard
Team average per dimension against Meets (3.0).
The whole org, one screen
1.0 to 5.0Meets line 3.0Not assessed
| Rep | Deal | S | P | I | CE | D |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Colleen Marchetti | ||||||
| Marco Delgado | Northern Cascadia Community College (NOCA) | 4.0 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 4.0 | 3.8 |
| Piedmont Symphony Orchestra / Kestrel Arts Center | 3.7 | 3.5 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 3.0 | |
| Thunder Falls Convention Centre | 3.7 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 3.0 | |
| Ottway Center | 3.8 | 3.3 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 2.6 | |
| Wheatland National Fairgrounds & Agriplex (WNFA) | 3.7 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 3.2 | |
| The Bastion Theatre | 3.8 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 3.1 | |
| University of Cascadia (Faculty of Kinesiology) | 4.5 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 3.0 | |
| Bayline Performances (Coast State University) | 3.6 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 2.0 | |
| Summit Republic Center | 3.8 | 3.5 | 2.0 | 2.5 | 2.8 | |
| Rory MacAllister | Prelude Center for the Arts | 3.7 | 3.7 | 1.5 | 1.8 | 3.3 |
| City of Gulfshore, Special Events | 3.6 | 3.0 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 2.8 | |
| Rivergate Symphony Orchestra | 3.4 | 3.8 | 2.0 | 1.3 | 2.8 | |
| Halstead Performing Arts Center | 3.7 | 3.0 | 1.5 | 3.0 | 3.0 | |
| City of Fairhaven / Brightwater Civic Center | 3.5 | 3.0 | 2.0 | 1.3 | 2.0 | |
| Wexler Center for the Performing Arts | 3.2 | 1.8 | 1.2 | 1.5 | 2.5 | |
| Devon Ashcroft | Harborview Herons (Northwind expansion) | 3.6 | 2.7 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 3.2 |
| Ashworth Enterprises (Ashworth University) | 4.0 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 2.5 | 3.7 | |
| University of Keystone | 4.0 | 3.7 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 3.0 | |
| Marchand Regents (Maple Line Centre) | 3.8 | 3.8 | 2.0 | 1.3 | 2.8 | |
| Weyburn Civic Center (City of Weyburn, VA) | 3.8 | 3.8 | 2.0 | 1.0 | 2.7 | |
| Wheatland Tech Athletic Association | 4.0 | 3.8 | 2.5 | 1.3 | 3.2 | |
| University of Wheatland - State Botanical Garden of Wheatland / UOW Rowan | 3.7 | 3.2 | 1.5 | 2.5 | 3.3 | |
| PC Fair (Ambervale County Fair & Event Center) | 4.2 | 4.0 | 2.5 | 2.0 | 3.4 | |
| Warren Okafor | ||||||
| Annalise Brockway | Frontier Convention Center (FCC), Northwind Lift | 4.3 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 1.2 | n/a |
| Elm Ridge Group (Northwind deal, Zenith Stadium / Corvo Arena / Halden Civic Center) | 3.4 | 3.2 | 2.0 | 2.5 | 2.7 | |
| Palm Reef Convention Center (Vantage-managed) | 3.2 | 3.2 | 2.0 | 1.2 | 2.3 | |
| Pacifica Convention Center (Northwind Lift) | 4.3 | 3.8 | 2.0 | 1.0 | 2.0 | |
| Arthur J. Milford Convention Center (Vantage Global / AMCC) | 3.5 | 3.8 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 2.5 | |
| Crescent Bay Arena (Aldara) | 3.8 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 3.3 | |
| Alderon Convention Center (Vantage / Halloway-owned, Northwind Enterprise account) | 4.0 | 2.5 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 3.0 | |
| Emil Zaborowski | Rafael M. Duarte Convention Center (CSEV / Visit Rio Alto) | 4.3 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 1.3 | 2.0 |
| Cheval Public Facilities District | 4.3 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 1.2 | 2.5 | |
| MVCC (Northwind Lift engagement) | 4.0 | 4.2 | 2.0 | 1.3 | 2.4 | |
| Explore Ardenne (Ardenne Convention Centre + Expo Centre) | 3.8 | 3.8 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 3.0 | |
| Saguaro County Stadium District / Verde Sports Complex | 3.7 | 4.2 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 | |
| The Florentine / Corso Silver Mesa (Expo) | 4.0 | 4.2 | 2.0 | 2.5 | 3.1 | |
| Seabright Convention & Visitors Bureau (SBCC) | 4.0 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 3.0 | |
| River Bend Sentinels / Longbow Events (Northwind renewal) | 3.8 | 2.5 | 2.5 | 3.0 | 4.0 | |
| Barrow-Lindqvist Inc. (BLI Expo) | 3.8 | 4.3 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 2.5 | |
| Great Lakes State Fair Park | 3.3 | 3.8 | 1.5 | 2.3 | 2.6 | |
| Harborview Convention Center | 3.7 | 4.0 | 2.3 | 1.5 | 2.0 | |
| Priya Raghavan | Sable Regional Visitors Authority (SRVA) | 4.5 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 1.3 | 2.3 |
| Cascadia Roundup / Northfield Centre | 4.6 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 2.5 | |
| Everstar (EEG - Everstar Entertainment Group) | 4.0 | 3.7 | 2.0 | 1.3 | 2.4 | |
| NRCC (Northwind expansion / Lift) | 3.8 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 3.3 | |
| Cardinal Metropolitan Convention Center (CDMCC) | 3.5 | 3.5 | 2.0 | 2.5 | 3.0 | |
| Cascadia Summit Convention Centre | 3.7 | 3.3 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 2.5 | |
| Kestrel County / The Homestead Events Complex | 3.8 | 4.2 | 2.7 | 1.5 | 2.5 | |
| Ardent Dynamics (Horizon Center) | 2.5 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 1.8 | 2.4 | |
| Windrose Cultural Center | 3.8 | 4.0 | 2.5 | 2.0 | 3.2 | |
| Aventine Live / SU Camden Athletics | 4.0 | 3.8 | 3.0 | 1.5 | 3.0 | |
| Bay Harbor Convention Center Corporation (BHCCC) | 3.1 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 3.2 | |
| Harbor Line Sports & Entertainment (Granite Field Stadium) | 3.2 | 3.2 | 2.0 | 2.8 | 3.0 | |
| Simone Keating | PGX Entertainment Group (Rasmus Center, Birch Bay) | 4.0 | 3.5 | 2.0 | 3.2 | 3.8 |
| City of Ironvale AL (Northwind renewal) | 3.3 | 2.5 | 2.0 | 2.5 | 3.0 | |
| HSCVA (Hartwell-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority) | 3.4 | 2.8 | 2.0 | 2.5 | 3.0 | |
| Ridgeline Energy District | 3.8 | 3.4 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 2.8 | |
| Dominion College of Physicians and Surgeons | 4.0 | 3.7 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 2.3 | |
| Renquist Worldwide | 2.5 | 3.2 | 2.0 | 1.3 | 3.0 | |
| Lattimore Arts | 3.8 | 3.5 | 2.0 | 3.0 | 3.5 | |
| Baywood Schools (Baywood ISD, Norlake) | 3.9 | 3.5 | 2.8 | 3.0 | 3.5 | |
| Bayou City FC (Aurora Energy Stadium, Northwind Summit) | 3.2 | 2.5 | 1.5 | 1.0 | 1.5 | |
| TRU Place | 3.7 | 3.2 | 2.3 | 1.5 | 2.7 | |
| U.S. Maritime Academy | 3.5 | 2.7 | 2.0 | 2.5 | 3.2 | |
| Museum of the Codex | 3.7 | 3.2 | 2.0 | 3.2 | 3.5 | |
| Bianca Feld | ||||||
| Ronan Whitfield | University of Coralview | 4.0 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 1.3 | 3.0 |
| Millbrook Convention Center | 3.8 | 3.1 | 2.0 | 3.3 | 3.4 | |
| Events By Ten (La Brasa / Almavia venue) | 3.7 | 2.5 | 2.0 | 2.5 | 2.5 | |
| Cedar Grove Performing Arts Center (Cedar Grove Recreation & Park District) | 4.3 | 4.3 | 3.0 | 1.5 | 2.8 | |
| Pacifica Condors (Northwind deal) | 4.0 | 3.0 | 2.0 | 1.4 | 3.5 | |
| Excite Brambleton Society | 4.0 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 3.5 | 3.3 | |
| University of Marchand / Halewood House | 3.7 | 4.0 | 2.3 | 1.5 | 3.0 | |
| Ridgemont Soccer Club | 3.2 | 3.5 | 2.3 | 1.5 | 2.8 | |
| Lakemont Events | 4.0 | 2.5 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 2.5 | |
| Meridian Health Training Center (Gulfshore Mariners practice facility) | 4.0 | 4.0 | 2.3 | 3.0 | 2.5 | |
| North Cascade State Fair | 4.0 | 4.0 | 3.0 | 2.5 | 3.3 | |
| Kingsmere Community College | 4.2 | 3.5 | 2.2 | 1.5 | 2.5 | |
| City of West Halden | 4.0 | 4.0 | 3.0 | 2.0 | 3.0 | |
| Sterling County / Redrock Convention Center (St. Brendan, UT) | 3.2 | 2.5 | 1.3 | 1.2 | 2.0 | |
| Bayside / Silver Mesa Athletics (B's) + Farrow Dining | 3.2 | 3.5 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 2.5 | |
| Redrock Center (Sterling County Convention Center) | 3.0 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 1.0 | 2.0 | |
| Cumberland State Athletics (Northwind deal) | 3.8 | 3.5 | 2.3 | 1.5 | 2.5 | |
| Prairie State Dept. of Agriculture / Prairie State Fair (Kingsford) | 4.0 | 3.2 | 2.0 | 3.4 | 3.6 | |
| Verano Arena | 4.4 | 4.0 | 3.0 | 1.8 | 3.0 | |
| Trevor Kingsley | Thornbury Cultural Center (City of Aldenwood, IL) | 4.0 | 4.0 | 2.0 | n/a | 3.5 |
| Fenmore Art Center | 4.5 | 3.9 | 2.0 | n/a | 3.7 | |
| Whitestone-Ferndale ISD (WPAC) | 4.0 | 4.0 | 3.0 | 3.2 | 3.2 | |
| Steel City Symphony Orchestra (Harmon Hall) | 3.8 | 4.3 | 2.5 | 2.0 | 3.4 | |
| Ellsworth Organization | 4.3 | 4.0 | 3.0 | 1.5 | 2.5 | |
| Ravenscroft Arts Centre | 4.0 | 4.3 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 3.0 | |
| City of Marlowe (Marlowe Grand Theater) | 4.5 | 4.0 | 2.2 | 2.3 | 3.0 | |
| The Merritt Center | 4.0 | 3.8 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 3.5 | |
| Pinebluff Community College, HPAC (Hargrove Performing Arts Center) | 4.0 | 4.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 3.6 | |
| Place des Lumieres | 4.2 | 3.1 | 2.1 | 1.5 | 2.5 | |
| Halloran University | 4.0 | 4.0 | 3.0 | 2.2 | 3.0 | |
| Museum of Fine Arts, Calder City | 4.5 | 4.2 | 3.0 | 2.5 | 4.0 | |
| Kingsbridge Museum | 3.8 | 4.0 | 3.2 | 2.0 | 3.0 | |
| Rivergate Opera | 4.0 | 2.5 | 2.5 | 3.2 | 4.0 | |
| GAPA (Glenport Association for the Performing Arts) | 4.1 | 4.3 | 3.0 | 2.0 | 2.5 | |
| Alta Valley University, Norwood Center for the Performing Arts | 4.0 | 3.0 | 2.0 | 2.5 | 4.0 | |
| Thicket Forward / Thicket Theater campus | 4.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 2.8 | 2.5 | |
| Curtis Vance | RMG (reseller) / TSI (end customer) | 4.0 | 3.6 | 2.0 | 2.5 | 3.0 |
| BRIX (Lakeshore Central Depot/Transline + BRIX@Orbit global) | 3.5 | 3.8 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 2.2 | |
| Beacon Dining USA (Vista/Fern, Landmark Mutual RFP) | 3.5 | 3.0 | 2.0 | 3.2 | 2.4 | |
| Willowmere Golf Club (Willowmere Heights Park District) | 1.5 | 1.0 | 1.0 | 1.0 | 1.0 | |
SPICED, five columns. Decision shown is Decision Process. Decision Criteria and Engagement appear when you open a deal in the Coaching tab.
Reps with growth plan
Strongest reps first. Open a rep, review their key blocks and top opportunities, and pick one action to run with them this week. Each opportunity carries the moment from a real call and the practice prompts.
Trevor KingsleyBianca Feld · 17 deals · overall 3.1S 4.1P 3.7I 2.4CE 2.2D 3.2
Trevor Kingsley runs a strong front half of SPICED (Situation 4.1) but stalls on Critical Event and Impact. Coaching Critical Event first will move the most deals.
Keep doingSituation is a real strength at 4.1. Keep opening deals with it.
Keep working onImpact at 2.4 is the nearest win. One focused push clears the Meets line of 3.0.
Stop doingStop accepting a calendar date as a deadline. Surface the consequence that forces a decision by a date.
Top opportunities. Pick one action with your rep.
Critical EventStart here this week
You2.2
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Trevor Kingsley from 2.2 to the 3.0 standard on Critical Event.
Customer said"I'm already using mine, but what I, because what I don't want is to either rush you guys, if it makes sense to fully do something for us in the near term, we can take a bit more time and do it, right?"
You said"Got it. Yeah. Well, yeah. Let's jump in and see what we can pick up today."
Try instead"That makes sense, and I want to be sure we time this around your world instead of ours. You mentioned the leadership succession and that two windows really matter: the fall stop-clause window and the post-holiday January window. Which of those is the first decision you would hate to be making on the word document or your AI hack? If we anchor go-live to being ready ahead of that window, what is the latest we could start implementation and still have you live in time? That tells us both whether 'a little more time' means weeks or months, and what is actually at stake if we miss it."
Impact
You2.4
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Trevor Kingsley from 2.4 to the 3.0 standard on Impact.
Customer said"And also getting under that number. The reason I say we have to sell it is because that, that'll that's one of those things that we can walk into a council meeting and say we are going to say we are going to, we're going to charge. We're going to save this much a year and they'll just be like, yeah, do it just like, yeah, there's no process."
You said"Is that number dropping? Fine. Yeah."
Try instead"Let's put a real number on that for your council. You're running roughly $7 a ticket today across about 10,000 tickets, which is about $70K a year in fees. If we get you down to around $1 plus card, you're trimming that by something like $60K a year, and it grows as you absorb your renters' volume. That's the savings line you walk in with. Can we build that case together?"
Marco DelgadoColleen Marchetti · 9 deals · overall 2.9S 3.8P 3.8I 2.0CE 2.1D 2.9
Marco Delgado runs a strong front half of SPICED (Situation 3.8) but stalls on Impact and Critical Event. Coaching Impact first will move the most deals.
Keep doingSituation is a real strength at 3.8. Keep opening deals with it.
Keep working onDecision at 2.9 is the nearest win. One focused push clears the Meets line of 3.0.
Stop doingStop jumping to price, a discount, or a feature when the buyer opens an Impact door. Quantify the cost of the problem first.
Top opportunities. Pick one action with your rep.
ImpactStart here this week
You2.0
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Marco Delgado from 2.0 to the 3.0 standard on Impact.
Customer said"most of the time you end up telling the system what you want. Like I need a room on this date at this hour... instead of I want to look at what's open already and find the slot I can squeeze into because I feel like that's how folks book things at noca"
You said"It's more along those lines? And that's, you've hit on one of the main differentiators... this is where it ties right into a search."
Try instead"That's exactly how your people work today, so let's attach a number: across your six campuses, how many room requests arrive in a week, and how much time does someone spend on each one over phone or email now? If each request is X minutes and Y come in weekly, that's roughly Z hours of staff time we'd hand back. Does that line up with what you see?"
Critical Event
You2.1
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Marco Delgado from 2.1 to the 3.0 standard on Critical Event.
Customer said"if somebody walks in and goes, oh, they'll be speaking for, you know, two or three minutes partway through the program, then that means I have to go back in and shift all of the times, you know, one by one"
You said"And, and I hear you. And, you know, plenty of folks are in the same spot... we absolutely want to review the current process, right? Because the whole point of venuedesk is helping operationalize a bunch of the stuff you're already doing."
Try instead"On that re-timing across a three-performance series, how many times in a week does a late change like that land on you, and how long does one complete rebuild and re-send really cost you? If each runs an hour and it happens a few times a week across classical, pops, and education, those are real hours we can quantify, plus the risk the one time a stale stage plot goes out."
Decision
You2.9
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Marco Delgado from 2.9 to the 3.0 standard on Decision.
Customer said"Do you Ozzie our fiscal year wraps up on June thirtieth... And honestly, just like capacity wise, like this crew, the people who are in the software the most, they're not going to want to change anything between now and the end of may, so."
You said"OK, you?... For sure. Good to know. And as you know, with anything any purchase there's lead time needed."
Try instead"That fiscal-year close is helpful. Walk me through the consequence: if VenueDesk or the event portal needs funding, does that money have to be committed before June 30, or can the budget roll? And operationally, what happens if the rental-program build slips past your busy season, is there a date the new inquiry flow has to be live by? I want us working backward from a real deadline rather than a calendar."
Devon AshcroftColleen Marchetti · 8 deals · overall 2.9S 3.9P 3.6I 2.1CE 1.8D 3.2
Devon Ashcroft runs a strong front half of SPICED (Situation 3.9) but stalls on Critical Event and Impact. Coaching Critical Event first will move the most deals.
Keep doingSituation is a real strength at 3.9. Keep opening deals with it.
Keep working onImpact at 2.1 is the nearest win. One focused push clears the Meets line of 3.0.
Stop doingStop accepting a calendar date as a deadline. Surface the consequence that forces a decision by a date.
Top opportunities. Pick one action with your rep.
Critical EventStart here this week
You1.8
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Devon Ashcroft from 1.8 to the 3.0 standard on Critical Event.
Customer said"there was this credit card charge, I think it came to 1,100 bucks. Someone stuck my name on it. I wasn't even in the building that day... and it took weeks before we could work out whose money it was to allocate toward their event. The only way we ever sorted it out was pulling up the cameras, because they'd walked up to the box office to pay."
You said"That's a clever way of handling that."
Try instead"Weeks to track down one $1,500 payment, and you only caught it by pulling camera footage. How often does a payment land unallocated or mis-named, and roughly how many hours does each one cost you and Rhiannon to chase? If it's even a couple a month at a few hours each, what does that come to in staff time over a year, plus the risk of revenue you never reconcile at all?"
Impact
You2.1
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Devon Ashcroft from 2.1 to the 3.0 standard on Impact.
Customer said"Our budget has been flat for eight years. I don't know if you're in Wheatland or not. So, I'm... Almost undoable."
You said"Yeah, for a... Profit agency, like some of these folks they have to. Yeah, I'm here to work through pricing with you guys."
Try instead"That eight-year flat budget is a real constraint. Help me see the other side: across the roughly 200 paid rentals you run in a year, what does Northwind actually save your team or earn the garden? If it went away tomorrow, how many staff hours or how much rental revenue would be at risk? That tells us what this renewal is worth defending, beyond what it costs."
Emil ZaborowskiWarren Okafor · 11 deals · overall 2.9S 3.9P 3.9I 2.1CE 1.9D 2.6
Emil Zaborowski runs a strong front half of SPICED (Pain 3.9) but stalls on Critical Event and Impact. Coaching Critical Event first will move the most deals.
Keep doingPain is a real strength at 3.9. Keep opening deals with it.
Keep working onDecision at 2.6 is the nearest win. One focused push clears the Meets line of 3.0.
Stop doingStop accepting a calendar date as a deadline. Surface the consequence that forces a decision by a date.
Top opportunities. Pick one action with your rep.
Critical EventStart here this week
You1.9
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Emil Zaborowski from 1.9 to the 3.0 standard on Critical Event.
Customer said"It would be great if a lot of it just auto pulled because I do go in there and enter like the rent, the forecasted rent. And like those are all service orders, it seems like there should be a way for that to pull across."
You said"That's great. What else?"
Try instead"That makes sense, and I'd like to put a number on it. Walk me through a normal week: how many events do you re-key those details for, and how many minutes does each one cost you? If it's, say, 20 events at 10 minutes each, that's a few hours a week of manual entry we could hand back to you, plus the error risk when numbers don't match the service orders. Does that range sound about right?"
Impact
You2.1
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Emil Zaborowski from 2.1 to the 3.0 standard on Impact.
Customer said"I have been a really big advocate of, like, how else can we use this system to be sure we're maximizing, you know, our efforts inside what we've got available to us."
You said"Yeah."
Try instead"That's exactly what I want to help with. If we got your usage maxed out and folded in those a la carte extras, what would that be worth to you, in staff hours saved or budget you'd avoid spending, and how would your team actually measure that win to justify it internally?"
Decision
You2.6
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Emil Zaborowski from 2.6 to the 3.0 standard on Decision.
Customer said"It could be July of 27 or October of 27. But, you know, we could take down that tree. They'd just keep hacking away at it."
You said"Yes. So, I think that we would be, we've been able to shape what operations does with the information we hand them over the years."
Try instead"That timing helps. Is there an event or a date on your calendar that this has to be working by? For instance, if we aimed go-live at [a named characteristic event or the start of your busy season], what happens to your team if it is not ready then? Let's pick one real event as our proof case and work backward to a date, so we both know what we are driving to."
Ronan WhitfieldBianca Feld · 19 deals · overall 2.8S 3.8P 3.4I 2.2CE 2.0D 2.8
Ronan Whitfield runs a strong front half of SPICED (Situation 3.8) but stalls on Critical Event and Impact. Coaching Critical Event first will move the most deals.
Keep doingSituation is a real strength at 3.8. Keep opening deals with it.
Keep working onDecision at 2.8 is the nearest win. One focused push clears the Meets line of 3.0.
Stop doingStop accepting a calendar date as a deadline. Surface the consequence that forces a decision by a date.
Top opportunities. Pick one action with your rep.
Critical EventStart here this week
You2.0
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Ronan Whitfield from 2.0 to the 3.0 standard on Critical Event.
Customer said"We want to make sure it covers what we need there."
You said"If your team could reach a decision within the same month we're having this conversation, we can offer a significant incentive in exchange for you guys moving faster on that decision."
Try instead"Rather than manufacturing a discount deadline, ask the buyer what is really driving their timing: 'When does your contract with Atrium Reserve renew, and is there a date you need to be live by? You run about 160 revenue events a year, so is there an exhibitor or event season you'd want this in place ahead of?' That surfaces a buyer-owned dated event with a real consequence the deal can anchor to."
Impact
You2.2
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Ronan Whitfield from 2.2 to the 3.0 standard on Impact.
Customer said"a lot of the time our contracts have to be quite, they need to be pretty malleable. They're very specific. A lot of times we have to add addendums at various points in the workflow... it's hard to change verbiage. It's hard to change pricing, it's hard to change items."
You said"Yeah. I mean, you'd be able to change that kind of thing on the fly. I mean, there's a, you know, you'd have a template. But then if you're like, hey, I need to add this new paragraph... that can all, and we can walk you through that like on a product demonstration"
Try instead"Got it, flexible contracts and addendums matter. When the other systems forced everything to be set up at the start, what did that actually cost you, delayed deals, staff hours redoing contracts, or revenue you couldn't capture? If you could change verbiage and add addendums on the fly, what would that be worth to the business?"
Decision
You2.8
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Ronan Whitfield from 2.8 to the 3.0 standard on Decision.
Customer said"a lot of the time our contracts have to be quite, they need to be pretty malleable. They're very specific. A lot of times we have to add addendums at various points in the workflow... it's hard to change verbiage. It's hard to change pricing, it's hard to change items."
You said"Yeah. I mean, you'd be able to change that kind of thing on the fly. I mean, there's a, you know, you'd have a template. But then if you're like, hey, I need to add this new paragraph... that can all, and we can walk you through that like on a product demonstration"
Try instead"Got it, flexible contracts and addendums matter. When the other systems forced everything to be set up at the start, what did that actually cost you, delayed deals, staff hours redoing contracts, or revenue you couldn't capture? If you could change verbiage and add addendums on the fly, what would that be worth to the business?"
Simone KeatingWarren Okafor · 12 deals · overall 2.8S 3.6P 3.1I 2.1CE 2.2D 3.0
Simone Keating runs a strong front half of SPICED (Situation 3.6) but stalls on Impact and Critical Event. Coaching Impact first will move the most deals.
Keep doingSituation is a real strength at 3.6. Keep opening deals with it.
Keep working onDecision at 3.0 is the nearest win. One focused push clears the Meets line of 3.0.
Stop doingStop jumping to price, a discount, or a feature when the buyer opens an Impact door. Quantify the cost of the problem first.
Top opportunities. Pick one action with your rep.
ImpactStart here this week
You2.1
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Simone Keating from 2.1 to the 3.0 standard on Impact.
Customer said"Yeah, I think as we grow and we start assigning tasks or jobs, that could be a function we'd use for sure. I think right now we're getting everybody, really company wide, used to the new look"
You said"so it sounds like venuedesk might be more of a future state thing once you guys get more entrenched in the system and see whether that's a need for you guys, but just wanted to put it in front of you to see if it was something you guys wanted to roll out now versus later. But any other questions for me at all?"
Try instead"That makes sense, you're still settling in the core system. Help me understand the calendar: when does your operations ramp peak this season, and is there a point, a season opener, a staffing-up date, a budget cycle, where lacking shared, mobile job assignments actually costs you on a game day? I'd like to tie the VenueDesk decision to a date that matters to your operation, rather than leaving it as someday."
Critical Event
You2.2
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Simone Keating from 2.2 to the 3.0 standard on Critical Event.
Customer said"Yeah, I think as we grow and we start assigning tasks or jobs, that could be a function we'd use for sure. I think right now we're getting everybody, really company wide, used to the new look"
You said"so it sounds like venuedesk might be more of a future state thing once you guys get more entrenched in the system and see whether that's a need for you guys, but just wanted to put it in front of you to see if it was something you guys wanted to roll out now versus later. But any other questions for me at all?"
Try instead"That makes sense, you're still settling in the core system. Help me understand the calendar: when does your operations ramp peak this season, and is there a point, a season opener, a staffing-up date, a budget cycle, where lacking shared, mobile job assignments actually costs you on a game day? I'd like to tie the VenueDesk decision to a date that matters to your operation, rather than leaving it as someday."
Decision
You3.0
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Simone Keating from 3.0 to the 3.0 standard on Decision.
Customer said"Yeah, I think as we grow and we start assigning tasks or jobs, that could be a function we'd use for sure. I think right now we're getting everybody, really company wide, used to the new look"
You said"so it sounds like venuedesk might be more of a future state thing once you guys get more entrenched in the system and see whether that's a need for you guys, but just wanted to put it in front of you to see if it was something you guys wanted to roll out now versus later. But any other questions for me at all?"
Try instead"That makes sense, you're still settling in the core system. Help me understand the calendar: when does your operations ramp peak this season, and is there a point, a season opener, a staffing-up date, a budget cycle, where lacking shared, mobile job assignments actually costs you on a game day? I'd like to tie the VenueDesk decision to a date that matters to your operation, rather than leaving it as someday."
Priya RaghavanWarren Okafor · 12 deals · overall 2.8S 3.7P 3.4I 2.1CE 1.8D 2.8
Priya Raghavan runs a strong front half of SPICED (Situation 3.7) but stalls on Critical Event and Impact. Coaching Critical Event first will move the most deals.
Keep doingSituation is a real strength at 3.7. Keep opening deals with it.
Keep working onDecision at 2.8 is the nearest win. One focused push clears the Meets line of 3.0.
Stop doingStop accepting a calendar date as a deadline. Surface the consequence that forces a decision by a date.
Top opportunities. Pick one action with your rep.
Critical EventStart here this week
You1.8
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Priya Raghavan from 1.8 to the 3.0 standard on Critical Event.
Customer said"it doesn't export any formulas. So sometimes I'm then having to go in and, you know, drop formulas into the columns... but I always go back through to audit and make sure what the sales people put in the cdf fields is right... then I'll have to manually update that number"
You said"The reason I keep pushing... I'm trying to find where there's extra work happening that doesn't involve... it's not adding value, and 'that is the definition of non value added work.' He named the pain perfectly but never asked what it costs."
Try instead"Put a number on it right there: 'How many hours a week do that Excel rebuild and CDF audit eat, and how often do you actually catch an error? If it runs, say, 4 hours a week across the team, that comes to roughly 200 hours a year re-keying numbers the system should hand you already. Does that sound right?' That turns a named pain into a credible cost-of-problem figure the configuration work can be justified against."
Impact
You2.1
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Priya Raghavan from 2.1 to the 3.0 standard on Impact.
Customer said"I think it'll help a lot with kind of how they handle their day to day across all of these events. So, yeah, that'll be a big, plus big, nice thing to have for sure."
You said"Really great for you guys."
Try instead"That's great to hear. To make sure we scope this right for the renewal, can I ask, what does running those events day to day cost the team now? Roughly how many hours a week across how many people, or where do delays actually hurt you? If the integration took that away, what would solving it be worth to the business?"
Decision
You2.8
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Priya Raghavan from 2.8 to the 3.0 standard on Decision.
Customer said"it doesn't export any formulas. So sometimes I'm then having to go in and, you know, drop formulas into the columns... but I always go back through to audit and make sure what the sales people put in the cdf fields is right... then I'll have to manually update that number"
You said"The reason I keep pushing... I'm trying to find where there's extra work happening that doesn't involve... it's not adding value, and 'that is the definition of non value added work.' He named the pain perfectly but never asked what it costs."
Try instead"Put a number on it right there: 'How many hours a week do that Excel rebuild and CDF audit eat, and how often do you actually catch an error? If it runs, say, 4 hours a week across the team, that comes to roughly 200 hours a year re-keying numbers the system should hand you already. Does that sound right?' That turns a named pain into a credible cost-of-problem figure the configuration work can be justified against."
Annalise BrockwayWarren Okafor · 7 deals · overall 2.7S 3.8P 3.5I 1.9CE 1.6D 2.6
Annalise Brockway runs a strong front half of SPICED (Situation 3.8) but stalls on Critical Event and Impact. Coaching Critical Event first will move the most deals.
Keep doingSituation is a real strength at 3.8. Keep opening deals with it.
Keep working onDecision at 2.6 is the nearest win. One focused push clears the Meets line of 3.0.
Stop doingStop accepting a calendar date as a deadline. Surface the consequence that forces a decision by a date.
Top opportunities. Pick one action with your rep.
Critical EventStart here this week
You1.6
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Annalise Brockway from 1.6 to the 3.0 standard on Critical Event.
Customer said"I don't have much time these days to do that and people... worry, they say one day I'll if I ever get hit by a bus or leave that they'll lean on Rosemary and you a lot more."
You said"A common story careful, we have a, we have a habit of poaching people like you to come work here, come on as a consultant. So they better watch out."
Try instead"That key-person risk is worth quantifying. How many hours a week do you personally put into building and keeping up these Excel workarounds and custom reports only you know how to run? And if you were out for a month, how many of these reports just stop, and what does upper management lose when the GM/AGM can't pull their forecast or pace numbers? Let's total up the hours and the reporting that breaks, because that cost is the business case for fixing it."
Impact
You1.9
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Annalise Brockway from 1.9 to the 3.0 standard on Impact.
Customer said"I know you all are kind of in the middle of renewal and other stuff."
You said"Rosemary (the rep) mentioned this herself in passing while walking through who handles money, then shifted to scheduling status meetings; she never asked when the renewal date is or what happens if it slips."
Try instead"When does the current contract come up for renewal, and what deadline are you working back from? If the GL integration and that final module aren't live by renewal, does that shift the conversation internally? I want to be sure we have the right pieces done by the date that actually matters to you."
Decision
You2.6
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Annalise Brockway from 2.6 to the 3.0 standard on Decision.
Customer said"I don't have much time these days to do that and people... worry, they say one day I'll if I ever get hit by a bus or leave that they'll lean on Rosemary and you a lot more."
You said"A common story careful, we have a, we have a habit of poaching people like you to come work here, come on as a consultant. So they better watch out."
Try instead"That key-person risk is worth quantifying. How many hours a week do you personally put into building and keeping up these Excel workarounds and custom reports only you know how to run? And if you were out for a month, how many of these reports just stop, and what does upper management lose when the GM/AGM can't pull their forecast or pace numbers? Let's total up the hours and the reporting that breaks, because that cost is the business case for fixing it."
Rory MacAllisterColleen Marchetti · 6 deals · overall 2.5S 3.5P 3.1I 1.7CE 1.7D 2.7
Rory MacAllister runs a strong front half of SPICED (Situation 3.5) but stalls on Impact and Critical Event. Coaching Impact first will move the most deals.
Keep doingSituation is a real strength at 3.5. Keep opening deals with it.
Keep working onDecision at 2.7 is the nearest win. One focused push clears the Meets line of 3.0.
Stop doingStop jumping to price, a discount, or a feature when the buyer opens an Impact door. Quantify the cost of the problem first.
Top opportunities. Pick one action with your rep.
ImpactStart here this week
You1.7
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Rory MacAllister from 1.7 to the 3.0 standard on Impact.
Customer said"on first look to me, it kind of seems like we're just repackaging the info that's already sitting in there. And I think that'd need a longer conversation on our side about whether that helps or hurts the way we work today."
You said"Yeah, I was just about to say funny timing, Marisela that you brought that up because we're actually considering offering free trials for venue desk... I think we first discussed doing like a 35 day free trial."
Try instead"Fair push, Marisela, so let me ground it in your world. When a day-of stage change lands, you told me you revise the event order and send a change notification, or you walk it over in person. During a busy run of shows, how often in a week does that occur, and about how long does one round of re-entry and re-notifying take across the team? Has a setup ever been missed because the change didn't reach the floor in time? If we can attach even a rough number to those hours and to the cost of one missed setup at a live performance, we can weigh the trial against something real rather than a gut feel."
Critical Event
You1.7
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Rory MacAllister from 1.7 to the 3.0 standard on Critical Event.
Customer said"And we're not trying to move on this like right away or anything since our season's already like started, but,"
You said"Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yeah, you're inside a renewal, so you're pretty locked for a couple years."
Try instead"That makes sense, and it's actually the perfect reason to time this deliberately. When does your next season planning lock, and when does the ARTOS integration have to be live so the artistic team and stage crew aren't double entering? If we anchor venuedesk and the Outlook sync to that go-live date, what does missing that window cost your team in manual work next season?"
Decision
You2.7
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Rory MacAllister from 2.7 to the 3.0 standard on Decision.
Customer said"We can probably circle back to that later Desmond once things settle down, in your world"
You said"I think in the last one of the last webinars, they may have run a quick preview, but I can dig up a link for that and send over the timestamp of where it is if you'd want just like a short summary"
Try instead"Totally get that things are chaotic with the three vacancies. Help me understand the timing though: is there a point this year where executive reporting shifts from nice-to-have to must-have, a budget cycle, a council review, a board or city-manager ask with a date attached? If Devon and Odette expect event dashboards by a particular meeting, that gives us something real to work back from. Otherwise I want to be sure we are not simply admiring Northwind Analytics in six months with nothing pushing the conversation forward."
Curtis VanceBianca Feld · 4 deals · overall 2.4S 3.1P 2.9I 1.8CE 2.0D 2.1
Curtis Vance runs a strong front half of SPICED (Situation 3.1) but stalls on Impact and Critical Event. Coaching Impact first will move the most deals.
Keep doingSituation is a real strength at 3.1. Keep opening deals with it.
Keep working onPain at 2.9 is the nearest win. One focused push clears the Meets line of 3.0.
Stop doingStop jumping to price, a discount, or a feature when the buyer opens an Impact door. Quantify the cost of the problem first.
Top opportunities. Pick one action with your rep.
ImpactStart here this week
You1.8
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Curtis Vance from 1.8 to the 3.0 standard on Impact.
Customer said"I can take a look at this demo and you let me know what works best for you since you'll be away for a bit."
You said"Yeah. Let's see, you know tomorrow is actually pretty wide open. Do you, are you in the office tomorrow? Would you have any time then?"
Try instead"Before we lock in the time, can I ask what prompted you to look at this to begin with? What's not working today at Willowmere that you'd want a system like ours to solve? Even one or two pain points will let me tailor that pre-recorded demo to what actually matters to you."
Critical Event
You2.0
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Curtis Vance from 2.0 to the 3.0 standard on Critical Event.
Customer said"I can take a look at this demo and you let me know what works best for you since you'll be away for a bit."
You said"Yeah. Let's see, you know tomorrow is actually pretty wide open. Do you, are you in the office tomorrow? Would you have any time then?"
Try instead"Before we lock in the time, can I ask what prompted you to look at this to begin with? What's not working today at Willowmere that you'd want a system like ours to solve? Even one or two pain points will let me tailor that pre-recorded demo to what actually matters to you."
Decision
You2.1
Meets3.0
Closing this to Meets moves Curtis Vance from 2.1 to the 3.0 standard on Decision.
Customer said"I can take a look at this demo and you let me know what works best for you since you'll be away for a bit."
You said"Yeah. Let's see, you know tomorrow is actually pretty wide open. Do you, are you in the office tomorrow? Would you have any time then?"
Try instead"Before we lock in the time, can I ask what prompted you to look at this to begin with? What's not working today at Willowmere that you'd want a system like ours to solve? Even one or two pain points will let me tailor that pre-recorded demo to what actually matters to you."
Coaching, by team and rep
One rep, one deal, one move. Each rep opens to the single deal whose fix would lift the rest: the moment that matters and the prompts to act on it. Set the focus next to each manager.
Colleen Marchetti
Marco DelgadoMarco Delgado runs a strong front half of SPICED (Situation 3.8) but stalls on Impact and Critical Event. Coaching Impact first will move the most deals.
Northern Cascadia Community College (NOCA)Pricing / Negotiation
Deal risk, high: Dormant 66 days at a late pricing stage, the buyer's end-of-April procurement close has lapsed, no quote sent or signed, and Impact stays unquantified (1.8) so a $60-70K spend rests on buyer urgency rather than a justified cost-of-problem.
Customer said"most of the time you end up telling the system what you want. Like I need a room on this date at this hour... instead of I want to look at what's open already and find the slot I can squeeze into because I feel like that's how folks book things at noca"
Marco Delgado said"It's more along those lines? And that's, you've hit on one of the main differentiators... this is where it ties right into a search."
Should have said"That's exactly how your people work today, so let's attach a number: across your six campuses, how many room requests arrive in a week, and how much time does someone spend on each one over phone or email now? If each request is X minutes and Y come in weekly, that's roughly Z hours of staff time we'd hand back. Does that line up with what you see?"
Next step to progress: Send the formal three-year quote with the CP contract number and phased booking-bundle pricing immediately, and in the same touch convert the manual booking pain into one quantified Impact number (room requests per week across six campuses times minutes per request equals staff hours returned) to justify the $60-70K against a hard August renewal, then lock a dated mutual action plan to the requisition deadline.
Impact (2.0, pain only) is the lowest dimension. Across all four calls the buyer surfaced real pain (manual phone and email booking, six fragmented campus systems, the obsolete Legacy version, and explicit change-management fear) but never articulated a measurable business outcome, and the rep never asked an impact question. The only value language is the rep's own unquantified 'probably save somebody a significant amount of time.' The visible numbers ($25-30K license, $60-70K renewal, $10K procurement threshold, 250 implementation hours) are price, constraint, and cost-of-solution, all business-size traps, not cost-of-problem. A late-stage deal carries price but no business impact to justify it.
Other deals (8), click to inspect
Piedmont Symphony Orchestra / Kestrel Arts CenterDemo / Evaluation
Piedmont Symphony Orchestra / Kestrel Arts CenterDemo / Evaluation
Deal risk, high: Dormant 59 days with timeline slipped from spring contracting to September, single-threaded on two contacts who both disclaim buying authority, no Critical Event, and unquantified Impact while the buyer is still asking for the financial case.
Customer said"if somebody walks in and goes, oh, they'll be speaking for, you know, two or three minutes partway through the program, then that means I have to go back in and shift all of the times, you know, one by one"
Marco Delgado said"And, and I hear you. And, you know, plenty of folks are in the same spot... we absolutely want to review the current process, right? Because the whole point of venuedesk is helping operationalize a bunch of the stuff you're already doing."
Should have said"On that re-timing across a three-performance series, how many times in a week does a late change like that land on you, and how long does one complete rebuild and re-send really cost you? If each runs an hour and it happens a few times a week across classical, pops, and education, those are real hours we can quantify, plus the risk the one time a stale stage plot goes out."
Next step to progress: Quantify the cost of the manual show-sheet re-timing (hours per week across classical, pops, and education) plus the stale-stage-plot risk, build the financial and onboarding write-up Aveline requested, and use it to get the campus-wide budget owner and Kestrel partner approvers named and into the June conversation, converting two non-deciding champions into reachable authority with a dated mutual action plan tied to a pre-busy-season cutover.
No Critical Event exists anywhere in the two-call sequence: every timeline is a calendar cue word (April, summer, June, September) or seller-floated scheduling, with no dated external event carrying a forced consequence. The buyer actively removes urgency ('even very small changes take quite a long time to implement') and the rep never tried to co-create a CE such as a pre-busy-season cutover window with a cost of slipping. Impact is a related weakness: the rep surfaced rich pain (manual minute-by-minute re-timing, 'word salad' version control, ~99 contractors with no access) but never asked an impact question, so it stayed personal pain and never became a measurable business outcome.
Thunder Falls Convention CentreDiscovery
Thunder Falls Convention CentreDiscovery
Deal risk, medium: Active and warming (last call 5 days ago, multi-threaded), but late-discovery into a competitive RFP with unquantified Impact, no Critical Event with consequence, an unanswered seat-map showstopper, and only a vague rep-owned next step instead of a dated booked demo.
Customer said"depending on the price point, there might be room for more volume because right now we, currently our tickets are four dollars… service fee. So it's two dollars to us and two dollars to the ticketing company. So if we had more flexibility around that, we might be able to bring more of our 10 dollar consumer shows on board."
Marco Delgado said"Understood. Okay. There's a bit of a ceiling there then. The fee is too much. Kind of like a card minimum at a hardware store or whatever."
Should have said"That's a genuine cost worth quantifying. If the fee stopped being an obstacle, how many $10-and-under consumer shows would you put on annually, and about how many tickets apiece? Once we settle on a figure, we can show precisely what that missed volume is worth each year, to you and to the artists you'd otherwise turn down."
Next step to progress: Book the live demo on a specific buyer-co-owned date with the solutions engineer, anchored to the seat-map/floor-plan showstopper, and before that call quantify Impact (annual lost volume from the $5 flat fee on sub-$10 shows; per-event seat-map labor fees) and probe the RFP decision deadline to convert the May contract expiry into a Critical Event with consequence.
Impact is pain only, not business impact (score 2). The buyer surfaced real operational problems, the flat $5 fee blocking her $10 consumer shows and the per-event seat-map labor fees clients refuse to pay, but under the refined definition these are surfaced pain, not Impact: she never articulated a measurable business outcome, and the rep never asked an impact question to push past the annoyance into what it means to the business. He acknowledged each problem with an analogy and moved on. Crucially no diagnostic impact question was asked anywhere across either call (no 'what would solving this mean to your business', no 'to what extent is this important', no 'what happens if you do not change'). Every figure in the deal is a business-size or current-state number (30k tickets/yr, 95% online, $5 split $2/$2), which describes the company, not the cost of the problem. Until the rep asks an impact question and the buyer names a measurable consequence, this deal has a feature comparison, not a value case.
Ottway CenterStalled
Ottway CenterStalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled at 97 days dormant with no close, single-threaded through a non-decider after the champion left, no Critical Event, and Impact unquantified at a stage that never advanced past discovery.
Customer said"if we're already putting that much money your way, are we also paying stripe on top, you know, let's just cut her one big check and cover the whole thing."
Marco Delgado said"Yeah, one other thing worth keeping in mind... pretty soon you'll see zero integration ship as well."
Should have said"You said your CFO is typing every check into Xero by hand, then reconciling it back against Summit. About how many checks a month is that, and how long is each one taking her? If that's, say, a full day a week of manual reconciliation, that's the figure we'd show her to justify a look, because it's the cost of how things run today, separate from the price of the fix."
Next step to progress: Re-engage Sindre with a costed reconciliation business case, quantify the dual-hat CFO's manual check-keying and Stripe-to-Xero-to-Summit reconciliation into hours and dollars per week, and use that number to book a dated working session that brings the CFO/ED into the room, closing the Impact, Critical Event, and Decision gaps.
Impact is the lowest dimension (2.0, pain only): across two discovery calls real operational pain surfaced (calendar-only adoption, the dual-hat CFO manually keying every check into Xero and reconciling Stripe-to-Xero-to-Summit, a stalled tasktrail rollout), but the buyer never articulated a measurable business outcome and the rep never asked an impact question (what would solving this mean to the business, what happens if you do not change, to what extent is this important). The pain was never pushed past annoyance into a business consequence in hours, dollars, revenue, or customer experience, so no business case formed for the absent CFO Nadia explicitly asked the rep to help reach.
Wheatland National Fairgrounds & Agriplex (WNFA)Stalled
Wheatland National Fairgrounds & Agriplex (WNFA)Stalled
Deal risk, high: 101 days dormant with no follow-up after a hot demo, single-threaded on one CFO, no quantified Impact and no real Critical Event, and the June 30 implementation window is closing fast.
Customer said"It's like, I don't know, a 1,000 times better than what I've got. Now... it's like Christmas morning. I mean, this is like it's like that new car smell."
Marco Delgado said"And just so you're aware, I'm planning to grab, it feels like Christmas morning and a 1,000 times better than what we had today, as a couple of little sound bites for my boss once we hang up."
Should have said"When you say a thousand times better, help me attach a number to it: today, how many hours a month do you and Kaverly lose going screen-to-screen, pulling paper, and reconciling across both systems at month-end? And what's the cost when that part-time person leaves and the rekeying lands on the team?"
Next step to progress: Reopen with a value-anchored re-engagement email and call to the CFO Bettina Hoyle that delivers the long-promised premier pricing and redlined MA, and lands a dated decision deadline backward-planned from her June 30 fiscal-year-end and pre-October-fair window, converting the unquantified Christmas-morning enthusiasm into hours and dollars she will defend to her budget.
Impact is pain only (2.0): real personal pain surfaced (antiquated software, manual rekeying, dual-system reconciliation, pulling paper copies, a departing payables person) but the buyer never articulated a measurable business outcome, and the rep never asked an impact question to push past the pain into a business consequence. He took the buyer's 'Christmas morning, 1,000 times better' moment and reused it as a soundbite for his manager instead of converting it to hours and dollars, so the premier-tier price has no quantified justification to stand against.
The Bastion TheatreDemo / Evaluation
The Bastion TheatreDemo / Evaluation
Deal risk, medium: Recent and warm (5 days since last call) with the budget owner engaged, but no Critical Event, unquantified Impact, and no dated mutual next step, so the pending quote risks landing in a vacuum and stalling
Customer said"There's a three month window for us... July fifth to September 21... because the building is under renovation and we've got no availability at all. So that'd be a great time if we're talking about when we have downtime"
Marco Delgado said"So is that really across the next three months, or a few weeks inside the next three months?"
Should have said"That summer lull is your window to stand VenueDesk up and train the team while events are paused. To have it running and Wren's new sales department launched on it ahead of Pagefest in October, we'd need a signed order within the next few weeks, since implementation runs about four weeks once it enters the queue. Is landing it before your busy fall worth setting as our target date?"
Next step to progress: Send the VenueDesk quote tied to a co-created Critical Event: position the July 5 to Sept 21 renovation downtime as the window to get live and trained before Pagefest in October, work back the 4-week implementation queue to a specific sign-by date, and pair the price with a quantified Impact figure (hours per week chasing assignments and cost of a double-staffed or uncovered shift) so Wren has a dollar value to weigh the number against
Critical Event (1.5, weak): no Critical Event exists. The buyer handed the rep raw material (a hard July 5 to Sept 21 renovation downtime window plus a stated desire to use it, plus Pagefest in October), but the rep narrowed it to a vague timing question and let the urgency dissolve. With renewal not until 2028, there is no contractual pressure, so a CE must be co-created by tying the buy to VenueDesk being live and the team trained before the busy fall.
University of Cascadia (Faculty of Kinesiology)Stalled
University of Cascadia (Faculty of Kinesiology)Stalled
Deal risk, high: Roughly 123 days dormant after a priced proposal, single-threaded on one champion with no identified budget owner, no buyer-owned Critical Event, and unquantified Impact at a late stage.
Customer said"I find that there's a lot of, kind of, human error in there, you know, stuff gets missed which is like nobody's fault. It's just so many emails. The volume is pretty big. I've only got two bookings assistants working through those."
Marco Delgado said"You rattled off a couple of, listed off a couple spaces and facilities that you're running. If you had to ballpark it, how many bookable spaces would you say you oversee or can book into today?"
Should have said"When email volume causes a booking to slip, what is the real cost to you? A double-booked gym someone has to untangle, an external rental you lose, hours your two assistants burn chasing it? If those misses went away, what would that be worth in revenue or time back to your team?"
Next step to progress: Re-engage Solvej with a value-anchored reason to talk, not a status check: bring a quantified Impact estimate (lost external-rental revenue during the four-month window, hours of email rework, double-bookings avoided) tied to her stated September go-live, use that cost-of-delay to create a real Critical Event, and ask her to name and introduce the budget owner and supply-chain approver so the deal stops resting on a single champion.
Impact (2/5): no rep asked an impact question across any of the three calls. The buyer surfaced real pain (human error, missed bookings, manual email rework, the Excel 'puzzle') but it was never converted into a measurable business outcome; reps captured business-SIZE numbers (40 spaces, 1000+ events, 100+ users) instead, which is the trap. The deal reached a priced premier proposal anchored on surfaced pain, not on a measured cost of the problem.
Bayline Performances (Coast State University)Demo / Evaluation
Bayline Performances (Coast State University)Demo / Evaluation
Deal risk, high: Explicit cost and bandwidth pushback with the buyer disclaiming urgency, no Critical Event or sized Impact, single-threaded to users with no economic buyer, and 40 days dormant since the last call with no proposal out.
Customer said"Do you Ozzie our fiscal year wraps up on June thirtieth... And honestly, just like capacity wise, like this crew, the people who are in the software the most, they're not going to want to change anything between now and the end of may, so."
Marco Delgado said"OK, you?... For sure. Good to know. And as you know, with anything any purchase there's lead time needed."
Should have said"That fiscal-year close is helpful. Walk me through the consequence: if VenueDesk or the event portal needs funding, does that money have to be committed before June 30, or can the budget roll? And operationally, what happens if the rental-program build slips past your busy season, is there a date the new inquiry flow has to be live by? I want us working backward from a real deadline rather than a calendar."
Next step to progress: Have Devon send the bundled VenueDesk plus Event Portal quote sized against the 18-to-24-month rental and recharge revenue goal so cost is weighed against real upside, anchor it to a dated go-live before next busy season, and on the same touch ask Elsbeth who owns the budget and signs off so the deal stops being single-threaded to users.
Critical Event (1.5), no dated event with a spend-or-lose consequence exists; the buyer actively de-escalated urgency ('It's not super urgent') and used the June 30 fiscal close as a reason NOT to act. The deal has no forcing function.
Summit Republic CenterRecommendation / Proposal
Summit Republic CenterRecommendation / Proposal
Deal risk, high: 69 days dormant since the demo with no proposal-review call, single-threaded on Bastian, unquantified Impact, and only a soft 'September ish' critical event, so a promised upgrade rests on price alone.
Customer said"No, I go into Adobe and I'll build a form and collect a signature on it, but I have to build that custom. Every single time I'm making a custom form, every time it's a paint."
Marco Delgado said"Interesting. Got it."
Should have said"That sounds like real friction. Roughly how many of those custom forms are you building a week, and how long does each one take you? If that rework went away, what would the time be worth to your team, and would it let you turn proposals around faster for clients?"
Next step to progress: Call Bastian (GM and economic buyer) to book a proposal-review meeting, and before sending pricing, quantify the Impact (hours lost to custom Adobe forms, searching email for promoters, offline Sage invoicing and document sprawl) and convert the soft 'September before hockey' into a dated signing deadline with a backward-planned go-live, so the proposal is anchored to value and a critical event rather than price alone.
Impact (2.0): neither rep asked a single impact question across both calls. Real pain was named (custom forms 'every time it's a paint,' searching emails for the promoter, documents living outside the system) but no buyer was ever pushed to a measurable business consequence, so a multi-tier upgrade and 3-year extension head into proposal with no quantified value, leaving price as the only lever.
Rory MacAllisterRory MacAllister runs a strong front half of SPICED (Situation 3.5) but stalls on Impact and Critical Event. Coaching Impact first will move the most deals.
Wexler Center for the Performing ArtsStalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled 81 days with no close, single-threaded on a skeptical CFO-led group that reframed VenueDesk as redundant, no quantified Impact and no Critical Event (contract runs to Feb 2029, so zero renewal pressure), and the only next step is a dateless rep-owned free-trial offer.
Customer said"on first look to me, it kind of seems like we're just repackaging the info that's already sitting in there. And I think that'd need a longer conversation on our side about whether that helps or hurts the way we work today."
Rory MacAllister said"Yeah, I was just about to say funny timing, Marisela that you brought that up because we're actually considering offering free trials for venue desk... I think we first discussed doing like a 35 day free trial."
Should have said"Fair push, Marisela, so let me ground it in your world. When a day-of stage change lands, you told me you revise the event order and send a change notification, or you walk it over in person. During a busy run of shows, how often in a week does that occur, and about how long does one round of re-entry and re-notifying take across the team? Has a setup ever been missed because the change didn't reach the floor in time? If we can attach even a rough number to those hours and to the cost of one missed setup at a live performance, we can weigh the trial against something real rather than a gut feel."
Next step to progress: Re-engage Hollis and Marisela to reframe before re-pitching: book a 20-minute working call to quantify the day-of-change re-entry and notification workflow (how often per week, minutes per round, cost of one missed stage setup at a live show), then pin the 30-day VenueDesk trial to a specific start date with a named internal decision date, closing the absent Impact and missing Critical Event in one move.
Impact (1.2, absent): under the refined definition, no measurable business outcome or consequence was ever surfaced, and the rep asked zero impact questions. The buyer voiced only process skepticism and a fear of double work ('it just looks like we're reformatting the information that's already in there'), which is an objection, not even articulated pain, let alone a costed business impact. Rory never asked what the day-of-change re-entry and notification workflow costs Wexler, what a missed stage setup would mean, or to what extent solving this matters to the business, so the deal has no business consequence to attach VenueDesk to and the free trial has no number to prove against.
Other deals (5), click to inspect
Prelude Center for the ArtsRecommendation / Proposal
Prelude Center for the ArtsRecommendation / Proposal
Deal risk, high: 75 days dormant into a June/July renewal that is now upon them, the promised pricing package never landed, buyer flagged fiscal responsibility as the live brake, and Impact is unquantified with no buyer-owned Critical Event.
Customer said"We do really well inside the individual units at getting our incidents up to their directors. But once it moves from directors over to other directors, we struggle a bit with making sure everybody's on the same page, knowing what's happening. And I can see this being a benefit in that area."
Rory MacAllister said"Definitely."
Should have said"That gap between directors is precisely where risk hides. Help me quantify it: in an average month, how many incidents stall between directors, and when one slips, what is the cost in rework hours, or in exposure if it's a safety or HIPAA-sensitive incident? If we can size it, we can set it against the pricing I'm pulling together."
Next step to progress: Book the pricing/renewal call now and open it with a cost-of-problem question on the cross-director incident breakdown to quantify Impact, then frame the June/July summit renewal as the buyer-owned Critical Event with a stated consequence so TaskTrail/VenueDesk pricing weighs against a sized problem, not budget alone.
Impact is absent (1.5) and remains the deal's lowest dimension under the refined definition. The buyer surfaced real process pain (incidents stalling between directors, manual Smartsheet/SharePoint workarounds, PM duplication) but never named a measurable business outcome, cost, time, revenue, or CSAT, and the rep never asked an impact question, so this is surfaced pain, not Impact. Price will be weighed against budget alone instead of against a sized problem cost.
City of Gulfshore, Special EventsDemo / Evaluation
City of Gulfshore, Special EventsDemo / Evaluation
Deal risk, medium: Renewal is safe but the expansion is cooling into buyer-led comparison-shopping at 40 days dormant, with absent Impact, no dated Critical Event, unranked criteria, and the tier-pricing event count still disputed.
Customer said"We keep a separate, we just run it on its own through a credit card machine... It'd just be simpler if we could keep it all inside the system. You know, it's not, it doesn't kill us but yeah."
Rory MacAllister said"Yeah, we'll need the details on it too… and let me know what you think. I'll send over everything from my side."
Should have said"When you run it through that separate machine and then match it back to each event by hand, about how many hours a week is your finance team losing to that, and how frequently do payments land on the wrong event? Once we attach a number to what that manual reconciliation costs you in staff time and rework across a year, that becomes the case for northwind payments, rather than just 'it'd be easier.'"
Next step to progress: Before any quote, run a costing call that quantifies Impact on the named pains (hours per week on manual Meridian Trust card-machine reconciliation, payment-to-event mismatch rate, cost of paying full-user rates for view-only field staff) and reconcile the disputed real event volume by venue, then co-set a dated mutual decision step tied to the June renewal so the expansion has a value anchor and a forcing function.
Critical Event is now the deepest gap (1.5). The deal has no forcing function: the June renewal is stripped of urgency by the buyer ('we will be renewing absolutely, we already knew that'), and the RFP, the only dated-event candidate, is indefinitely paused, undated, and self-controllable by the buyer. Impact rises to 2.0 under the refined definition: real pain was surfaced (manual Meridian Trust card-machine reconciliation, paying full-user rates for view-only field staff) but it stayed personal pain ('it would just be easier', 'it doesn't kill us'), the buyer never articulated a measurable business outcome, and the rep never asked an impact question across three calls.
Rivergate Symphony OrchestraStalled
Rivergate Symphony OrchestraStalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled 75 days with no call since pricing was shown, single-threaded on a non-economic champion, no Critical Event, and Impact unquantified at a late, price-on-the-table stage.
Customer said"And we're not trying to move on this like right away or anything since our season's already like started, but,"
Rory MacAllister said"Yeah. Okay. Cool. Yeah, you're inside a renewal, so you're pretty locked for a couple years."
Should have said"That makes sense, and it's actually the perfect reason to time this deliberately. When does your next season planning lock, and when does the ARTOS integration have to be live so the artistic team and stage crew aren't double entering? If we anchor venuedesk and the Outlook sync to that go-live date, what does missing that window cost your team in manual work next season?"
Next step to progress: Re-engage Rhoda to revive the stalled $10K expansion and close the biggest gaps: build a quantified Impact number with her (hours per week lost to ARTOS-to-Northwind double-entry, headcount affected, cost of low adoption) and co-create a Critical Event by anchoring Venue Desk and Outlook sync to the ARTOS go-live or next-season build, then ask for a working session with supervisor Marisol and the new CFO so the business case reaches the economic buyer.
Critical Event is absent (1.3), now the lowest dimension after the refined Impact re-score. The buyer twice removed urgency ('not looking to do this super soon, season's already underway'; contract runs through 2028) and the rep reinforced the no-urgency rather than co-creating a dated event tied to the ARTOS go-live or next-season build. Impact remains weak at 2.0 (pain only): the buyer surfaced real personal pain (double-entry, three years of badgering staff, clogged Outlook calendars) but never a measurable business outcome, and the rep never asked an impact question. With no by-when and no business-level cost of the problem, a warm deal stalls into an open-ended 'circle back.'
Halstead Performing Arts CenterStalled
Halstead Performing Arts CenterStalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled and single-threaded, 90 days with no contact, no quantified Impact behind a $15K board ask, price flagged as a bitter pill, and the April budget window that gated it has already closed.
Customer said"we are keen to see a real ability to do settlements for purchase shows land somewhere on the roadmap, for, you know, the stuff we program ourselves. It's honestly not there at all. Not even close... for settlements with a promoter or an agent, it's just not there yet."
Rory MacAllister said"Okay. When was the last time you, like, actually talked with our team about that?"
Should have said"That gap sounds costly. Today, when you settle a purchased show with a promoter or agent outside the system, how are you handling it, how many hours does that eat per show, how many of those shows do you run in a year, and what does one bad settlement cost you? Let's put a number on what going without this costs so we can weigh it against the price."
Next step to progress: Reach back out to Callum Reith to learn whether Venue Desk made the new-fiscal-year budget, and book a working session that quantifies the cost of the broken promoter and agent settlement workflow (shows per year, hours per settlement, cost per error) so the $15K ask finally has a business case; loop in the CFO and director of finance he named.
Impact (1.5, absent): the buyer named real problems (no promoter/agent settlement capability, missing SSO, VP-of-programming adoption panic) but framed them as feature gaps and personal frustration, never as a measurable business outcome or consequence. Rory never asked an impact question (no 'what would solving this mean to the business', 'what happens if you do not change', 'to what extent is this important'), so only situation and surfaced pain exist, no business impact. Every number quoted is a solution price ($15K Venue Desk, ~$7K reimplementation, $5,000/$10,000 Services Express), never a cost-of-problem, so a board-approved $15K ask sits with no business case behind it.
City of Fairhaven / Brightwater Civic CenterDiscovery
City of Fairhaven / Brightwater Civic CenterDiscovery
Deal risk, medium: Optional expansion drifting in self-declared research mode with no Critical Event, unquantified Impact, undefined criteria, and single-threading through non-budget users; not dormant at 23 days, but the buyer deferred ('look at that later when things settle down') under a 2029 contract with no forcing function.
Customer said"We can probably circle back to that later Desmond once things settle down, in your world"
Rory MacAllister said"I think in the last one of the last webinars, they may have run a quick preview, but I can dig up a link for that and send over the timestamp of where it is if you'd want just like a short summary"
Should have said"Totally get that things are chaotic with the three vacancies. Help me understand the timing though: is there a point this year where executive reporting shifts from nice-to-have to must-have, a budget cycle, a council review, a board or city-manager ask with a date attached? If Devon and Odette expect event dashboards by a particular meeting, that gives us something real to work back from. Otherwise I want to be sure we are not simply admiring Northwind Analytics in six months with nothing pushing the conversation forward."
Next step to progress: Book a working session with the civic-center budget owner included (beyond Roland and the accountants) to quantify the cost of the surfaced pains and tie executive-reporting need to a dated event, a council budget cycle or a fiscal year-end or an exec who needs dashboards by a named meeting, converting the research-mode interest into a forcing function before the insight-data or Northwind Analytics packaging conversation can progress.
Critical Event absent (1.3): no dated event with a consequence forces a buying decision, and the rep never attempted to surface or co-create one. The deal has no forcing function and is drifting in self-declared research mode under a contract that runs through April 2029.
Devon AshcroftDevon Ashcroft runs a strong front half of SPICED (Situation 3.9) but stalls on Critical Event and Impact. Coaching Critical Event first will move the most deals.
Weyburn Civic Center (City of Weyburn, VA)Stalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled at 67 days dormant after two discovery calls, with no Critical Event, no quantified Impact, single-threaded to a non-authority champion, and surfaced city-hall and procurement blockers.
Customer said"there was this credit card charge, I think it came to 1,100 bucks. Someone stuck my name on it. I wasn't even in the building that day... and it took weeks before we could work out whose money it was to allocate toward their event. The only way we ever sorted it out was pulling up the cameras, because they'd walked up to the box office to pay."
Devon Ashcroft said"That's a clever way of handling that."
Should have said"Weeks to track down one $1,500 payment, and you only caught it by pulling camera footage. How often does a payment land unallocated or mis-named, and roughly how many hours does each one cost you and Rhiannon to chase? If it's even a couple a month at a few hours each, what does that come to in staff time over a year, plus the risk of revenue you never reconcile at all?"
Next step to progress: Email Bertram to book a dated SE discovery with Sunniva (the director) and finance in the room, anchored to the July fair as a go-live deadline, and quantify the recurring mis-attributed-payment pain (the 1,100 dollar camera-footage trace) into a buyer-owned dollar figure to justify the meeting.
Critical Event is the deepest gap: no dated, consequence-bearing event anywhere in two calls across six weeks. The recurring July fair (billed today through manual Excel) is the obvious deadline to work back from, and the buyer raised it himself, but Devon deflected on scheduling rather than anchoring a go-live date to vendor sign-ups. The deal has no decision-by-when and drifts behind the customer's own pacing ('three or four weeks away'). Impact stays band 2 in support of this: the buyer surfaced real pain (the $1,500 payment traced over weeks via camera footage, manual reconciliation, the paper agenda he quit doing) but never named a measurable business outcome, and the rep never asked an impact question.
Other deals (7), click to inspect
Harborview Herons (Northwind expansion)Stalled
Harborview Herons (Northwind expansion)Stalled
Deal risk, high: Late-stage pricing deal dormant 135 days with no contact in 90, no Critical Event, unquantified Impact, single-threaded to Fitzgerald with an unmapped approver, and explicit buyer hesitation to commit.
Customer said"I mean, realistically we're eight days out from opening day. So there's not a lot of time, we're already live as far as running the calendar program, and booking."
Devon Ashcroft said"Then I'll go ahead. I'll get that proposal over to you. I'll work backwards from that eight day mark based on our services delays, and how long the project takes to fully implement the other modules. And then that'll sort of shape, your timeline of when you'll make a decision and stuff."
Should have said"Devon should have caught that the buyer just told him opening day is NOT the deadline for this purchase (they're already live for it), and dug for the real forcing event: 'Since opening day is already handled, what's the first booking or banquet on Solveig's calendar that the current core setup can't run end-to-end, and what happens to that revenue or that client if it isn't ready in time?' That turns a calendar anchor into a dated event with a buyer-owned consequence, rather than using the eight-day mark to back-time a proposal."
Next step to progress: Re-engage Fitzgerald with a scoped phase-1 upgrade tied to a specific dated booking on Solveig's calendar that core cannot fulfill end-to-end, quantify the revenue or client-experience cost of missing it to create the Impact and Critical Event the deal lacks, and request a mutual decision date.
Critical Event (1.5), no real forcing event exists for the upgrade decision. The rep latched onto 'opening day' as the deadline, but the buyer explicitly decoupled it: the Herons are already live on the calendar/booking for opening day, and the Summit Premier modules being priced serve the non-game-day events business ('the other 264 days of the year'). 'Opening day' is a calendar cue word, not a Critical Event. No consequence forces the upgrade by a date, and the buyer repeatedly de-urgentizes ('appropriate pace', 'do we go all in or take steps forward'). The rep's 'I'll walk back from that eight-day mark' is seller-manufactured pacing, not a buyer consequence.
Ashworth Enterprises (Ashworth University)Pricing / Negotiation
Ashworth Enterprises (Ashworth University)Pricing / Negotiation
Deal risk, medium: Buyer was warm with a verbal yes on price, but the May-signing discount window has lapsed and the deal has gone 37 days quiet with no Critical Event locked and Impact still unquantified, so urgency is decaying.
Customer said"And we run it's a 1,000,000 emails, a 1,000,000 emails. Like I'm just like this is I'm already done with it and it's been about a month that we've been at this and it's just insanity."
Devon Ashcroft said"my ears perked up a bit when you brought up some other venues or spaces booking in the system."
Should have said"That back-and-forth sounds costly. About how many requests in a week ping between you, Casimir, and Anwen before one gets contracted, and how long is each loop? If that's even a few hours a week of your time plus Anwen's, what is the team paying for it, and are bookings slipping while requests sit in the spreadsheet?"
Next step to progress: Re-engage Marlise with a dated, signed proposal that ties the new conference space arriving in two weeks to a quantified cost of the manual two-system workflow (emails per week, inquiry-to-contract cycle time, Marlise plus Anwen FTE hours, slipped bookings), giving the $35K an ROI counterweight and converting the lapsed May discount into a fresh sign-by date as the Critical Event.
Impact stays at Pain only. The buyer surfaced vivid emotional pain about the manual, email-heavy, two-system booking workflow ('a 1,000,000 emails,' 'I'm already over it,' 'insanity'), but no measurable business outcome was ever articulated and the rep never asked an impact question to push past the annoyance into a business consequence (hours lost, FTE cost, inquiry-to-contract cycle time, slipped bookings). With no cost-of-problem on the table, the $35K price objection landed with no ROI counterweight. This is the lowest dimension and the most coachable.
University of KeystoneExpansion
University of KeystoneExpansion
Deal risk, medium: Active and recent at 23 days since last call, but single-threaded through Milo Ferrante with unquantified Impact, no dated Critical Event, and an undefined budget, so the live Libraries expansion thread can stall without a quantified cost case and a locked next step.
Customer said"I'm also starved for data on events, what they actually cost us to produce? How much staff time and materials go in? I just don't have a sense of the velocity or the cost."
Devon Ashcroft said"Okay. That's a rough problem to have, and a good problem to solve. Yeah. So what systems are in your stack today that you're kind of piecing together?"
Should have said"That's exactly the gap I'd like to help you quantify. Even roughly: how many hours a week does your event manager lose to that manual coordination between events and facilities? And over a year, how many events pass through her? If we can estimate the staff hours plus any rework or double-bookings, we can size what this inefficiency costs you today, and that's the number your budget conversation will turn on."
Next step to progress: Book a dated working session with Milo Ferrante, his event manager, and one management stakeholder to quantify the cost of the manual events-to-facilities workflow in staff hours and dollars per year, then pin a go-live date back from the July 2026 to June 2027 budget window, closing the Impact and Critical Event gaps and converting Milo into a champion on a customer-owned next step.
Impact is the lowest dimension (score 2, pain only). Across all three calls the buyer surfaced genuine pain (starved for data on event costs, single point of failure, scaling without staff) but no measurable business outcome, and Milo himself admitted the cost is unknown ('I simply don't have a sense of the velocity or the cost'). Devon never asked an impact question, so the pain was never carried into a business consequence the company can measure in hours, dollars, or efficiency. The only numbers present are solution price and business size, not the cost of the problem. Coach Devon to ask a direct impact question and size the cost of the manual events-to-facilities workflow, which also arms Milo's own budget case and supplies the consequence a real Critical Event needs.
Marchand Regents (Maple Line Centre)Expansion
Marchand Regents (Maple Line Centre)Expansion
Deal risk, high: Expansion stalled into prove-value-first posture with no Critical Event, unquantified Impact, a make-or-break criterion (external ice rentals) that the tool may not fit, a lost champion (Lucian) and a behind, unempowered replacement (Elodie) single-threaded, drifting to an undated later time despite recent contact.
Customer said"with your power user heading out, that took a lot of the institutional knowledge from that first summit implementation ... a lot of that never got done with Lucian for whatever reason ... I'm just asking whether we could get a little extra given the circumstances and the challenges we're up against right now"
Devon Ashcroft said"Yeah, no, I mean, I, I'm definitely open to making that, ask to the leadership ... maybe if it's like another 10, 25 hours given not only like, the missing documentation, on tasktrail, but also some of the situations"
Should have said"That power-user loss sounds costly in ways nobody has named yet. Can we attach a number to it? About how many staff hours a week is Elodie burning now re-learning what Lucian built, and how many events have run on paper since TaskTrail adoption stalled? If a stalled rollout means one more full season on manual dispatch logs, what does that cost you in rework or risk? Let's size that before we talk hours, because the cost of the problem is what justifies the support."
Next step to progress: Before scheduling more training or sizing the extra-hours bucket, run a focused working session with Elodie to quantify the cost of the stalled TaskTrail rollout (staff hours lost re-discovering Lucian's setup, events still run on paper, manual dispatch risk) and co-create a dated Critical Event, such as a specific event or season start the venue must be live for, that the booking-portal fit decision and the services hours then attach to.
Critical Event is the lowest dimension and the deal's primary coachable gap. No dated event with a consequence exists anywhere across the four calls; every timeline signal is calendar scheduling or operational preference, and the one external constraint (security director won't roll out 'during the season') is undated and pushes the decision OUT, not forward. The expansion is drifting toward an undated 'later time' with zero urgency. Separately, Impact remains a gap: real buyer-owned pain was surfaced (power-user Lucian left with the institutional knowledge, change-averse paper-based users, stalled TaskTrail rollout, event portal that does not fit external ice rentals), but it stayed at the level of operational and personal frustration. Under the refined definition that is Pain, not Impact: Devon never asked an impact question, never took any of it into a measurable business consequence, and in Call 3 converted the textbook trigger straight into remedy-sizing ('an extra 10, 25 hours').
Wheatland Tech Athletic AssociationDemo / Evaluation
Wheatland Tech Athletic AssociationDemo / Evaluation
Deal risk, high: May 18 re-sync appears to have slipped with no call in 48 days heading into pricing, and the deal carries no Critical Event, qualitative-only Impact, unranked buyer-supplied criteria, plus Casimir's hedged 'if we're comfortable,' so it risks stalling in an open-ended internal debrief.
Customer said"If you could give me, yeah, if you could give me a couple of weeks here, where are we? The fourth? So, maybe fifteenth? Sixteenth?... Let's push it to the eighteenth?"
Devon Ashcroft said"Fifteenth, is there a time of day we could pencil in as tentative?... So, I'll put two P. M. Does that work?"
Should have said"Happy to lock the 18th. Before then, help me understand the clock you're up against: is there a date this has to be live by, a season opener, a budget that closes, an event you can't afford to miss again like that Friday baseball game? If we're not live by then, what's the cost of staying on the current email-and-Teams setup?"
Next step to progress: Re-engage Obadiah to confirm the slipped re-sync and, before sending any number, co-create a Critical Event: tie go-live to a dated consequence (a season opener or budget close) and convert Torin's missed-Friday-game story into a quantified Impact (frequency times overtime and weekend-trip cost), then deliver pricing inside a written mutual action plan with a decision date.
Critical Event is absent (1.3): two demos and a pricing request in, the deal has no date-with-consequence forcing a decision. The buyer volunteered a vivid missed-game story and actively scheduled next steps, but Devon negotiated only a meeting time, never a why-by-when. Without a season-opener or budget-cycle anchor, this stalls in 'we'll debrief internally.'
University of Wheatland - State Botanical Garden of Wheatland / UOW RowanPricing / Negotiation
University of Wheatland - State Botanical Garden of Wheatland / UOW RowanPricing / Negotiation
Deal risk, high: Dormant about 68 days with the renewal expiring end of June and no quote delivered yet, a pure price fight (+9% against a hard 3% cap and an 8-year-flat budget the buyer calls almost undoable) with Impact unbuilt and no locked Critical Event, single-threaded through volatile Larkin procurement plus a re-required CES approval and a slow legal redline cycle, and customer-flagged rep churn cooling trust. High risk of a stalled, late, or shrunk renewal.
Customer said"Our budget has been flat for eight years. I don't know if you're in Wheatland or not. So, I'm... Almost undoable."
Devon Ashcroft said"Yeah, for a... Profit agency, like some of these folks they have to. Yeah, I'm here to work through pricing with you guys."
Should have said"That eight-year flat budget is a real constraint. Help me see the other side: across the roughly 200 paid rentals you run in a year, what does Northwind actually save your team or earn the garden? If it went away tomorrow, how many staff hours or how much rental revenue would be at risk? That tells us what this renewal is worth defending, beyond what it costs."
Next step to progress: Get the dual one-year and three-year quote into the buyer's hands now, paired with a one-page worth-of-solution case that quantifies Impact across the roughly 200 paid rentals (staff hours saved, rental revenue enabled or at risk) so the +9% has an ROI counterweight against the 3% cap, and on delivery lock a single dated buyer-owned next step that backward-plans from the end-of-June expiry through the re-required CES approval and the month-long procurement-to-legal redline cycle.
Impact (1.5, absent): no rep (Devon or Rory) asked a single impact question across all four calls. The deal is a price/SKU renewal negotiation with zero measurable business outcome surfaced - the only 'outcome' language is the customer's flat-8-year budget constraint, which is pain, not Impact. Event counts (727 confirmed, ~200 paid rentals) are business-size trap numbers, not the cost of a problem. This leaves the +9% increase landing as raw cost against a hard 3% vendor cap with no ROI counterweight.
PC Fair (Ambervale County Fair & Event Center)Demo / Evaluation
PC Fair (Ambervale County Fair & Event Center)Demo / Evaluation
Deal risk, high: No buyer-owned Critical Event (renewal expiry was defused with a no-shutoff guarantee and month-to-month bridge), Impact never quantified at the demo stage, and an imminent ~10-week fair blackout is about to freeze all year-round work with the deal drifting toward comfortable status quo.
Customer said"I'd love to say it'd be in place by fair, but with fair coming and everyone flipping to operational, it's probably something I'll be looking at and trying to switch over but I won't get to implement probably until after fair, which usually happens fair ends in… it's September the eighteenth"
Devon Ashcroft said"No, no, that's helpful because unfortunately, we're three weeks out from a post close to kickoff implementation schedule, so obviously, that can shift sometimes, but it gives us a sense of how to work backwards"
Should have said"The fair is the only dated external event in this entire conversation with a hard operational consequence: once fair mode kicks off in mid-July, the org freezes all year-round event work and implementation stops. Anchor a decision to it: 'So if your team goes heads-down for the fair from July 16, the realistic window to get AR live before that freeze closes around mid-June, meaning we'd need a signed decision by late May. Miss that and you're effectively pushed to October, carrying the manual fax/credit-card process and the PCI exposure through another whole event season. Does avoiding that slip matter enough to set a decision date with me?' That converts a delaying constraint into a buyer-owned forcing function."
Next step to progress: Submit the three-year core proposal with quantified Impact (hours saved on manual Excel/fax invoicing plus PCI-exposure dollars) and anchor a decide-by date to the pre-fair freeze: get it onto the next board agenda so a decision lands before the mid-July fair blackout, or the org carries the manual fax/PCI process and stays on Legacy through October; lock a dated next step (board-prep readout with Delphine and finance) in-call, not by email.
Critical Event (2.0): no genuine dated event with a real consequence forcing a decision. The one natural CE, the end-of-April renewal expiry, was actively defused by the rep (no-shutoff guarantee + month-to-month extension). The only true dated external event with a hard consequence, the fair (July 16 to ~Sept 18), acts as a delay constraint and was never converted into a decide-by-X forcing function anchored to the pre-fair freeze.
Warren Okafor
Annalise BrockwayAnnalise Brockway runs a strong front half of SPICED (Situation 3.8) but stalls on Critical Event and Impact. Coaching Critical Event first will move the most deals.
Elm Ridge Group (Northwind deal, Zenith Stadium / Corvo Arena / Halden Civic Center)Demo / Evaluation
Deal risk, medium: Deal is active (6 days since last call) but Impact is absent, no Critical Event has been converted to a decision deadline, and the most advanced Zenith thread is single-threaded through a buyer who joined one month ago.
Customer said"I don't know if it's like whether we can claim we'll get the Roi back out of it, enough to justify us putting all this extra cost in."
Annalise Brockway said"So I have more authority like internally if you can... get a signature approval by like end of next month, I could probably get you like maybe 20 percent off or like a discounted rate to see if like, maybe that works within the budget."
Should have said"That ROI question is exactly the one we should work out together. Walk me through what your small team spends today on the manual booking and accounting work you described, how many hours a week and across how many events, and what a missed or double-booked event costs you. Once we can put a number on the cost of running it the current way, we can test the return honestly instead of guessing at it."
Next step to progress: Send Rodrigo the promised Summit quote framed around a quantified cost-of-status-quo Impact case, not just price, and back-calculate the August 1 go-to-market date against the 4-month signature-to-live runway to set a concrete sign-by deadline, while multi-threading beyond the one-month-tenure user-buyer to a budget owner on the Zenith side.
Impact (2.0, pain only, still the lowest dimension). Real pain surfaced (Halden's break-even and unquantified-ROI pressure, Corvo's manual report-pulling workaround) but no rep ever pushed it into a measurable business outcome, and no rep ever asked an impact question (what solving this would be worth, what not changing costs the business). Every number on the table is the trap (event volumes = Situation, 12-week deployment = timeline, ~20% discount = price). The Halden buyer named her own ROI doubt and the rep answered with a discount instead of building a value case.
Other deals (6), click to inspect
Frontier Convention Center (FCC), Northwind LiftDiscovery
Frontier Convention Center (FCC), Northwind LiftDiscovery
Deal risk, medium: Relationship is warm, well multithreaded, and only 51 days since last contact, but the deal has sat in pure discovery across seven calls with no quantified Impact, no Critical Event, and only weak Decision Criteria, so there is nothing forcing a decision before the recommendations report lands.
Customer said"these guys burn an incredible amount of time keying all this data in and making sure the stuff gets entered the right way just so we can pull the information now, right? But I don't know that they're that that's the right way or whether there's a better way, right?"
Annalise Brockway said"Yep. All good questions. All good questions. What I'm hearing is the, space."
Should have said"That phrase, an extraordinary amount of time, is the doorway to Impact, so size it before moving on: Roughly how many hours a week does the event management team lose to this manual function input, and across how many concurrent events? Then turn it into a number, hours per week times loaded rate, so the recommendation to streamline it can be ranked by dollars saved, not just by clicks reduced."
Next step to progress: Schedule and deliver the recommendations health report as a value-ranked readout, but first close the Impact gap by going back to Danika Ostrow to quantify the strongest volunteered pain, the extraordinary amount of time event managers spend on manual function input, converting it to hours per week times loaded rate across concurrent events, then co-create a Critical Event by tying the report to a dated business driver so the prioritized projects have a deadline and a cost basis to act on.
Critical Event is absent (1.2): no dated event with a forced-decision consequence has been surfaced or co-created across the four discovery calls. The only dated language (contract due dates, decision dates, a two-week lead time) are FCC's customer-facing artifacts, not a driver forcing FCC to act on the Northwind engagement, so the imminent recommendations report has no deadline and no consequence anchoring why FCC must act by any date. (Impact, rescored to 2.0, remains a weak pain-only dimension: strong operational pain was surfaced but no buyer named a measurable business outcome and the rep never asked an impact question.)
Palm Reef Convention Center (Vantage-managed)Post-sale / Active
Palm Reef Convention Center (Vantage-managed)Post-sale / Active
Deal risk, medium: Recent and warm (11 days since last contact, active catering implementation), so not stalled, but Impact and Critical Event are absent and the commercial expansion is single-threaded and unforecasted with the rep explicitly removing urgency, so it can drift open-ended.
Customer said"Well, it's just to have it daily. Well, we're trying to report on how many days the convention center got used? What the revenue came to? Revenue per event, and we're looking at duplicate bookings. So overlapping bookings in one space on the same day might be the same event or might be a different one entirely. Those are the, at least the sort of phase one problems I've been working through."
Annalise Brockway said"Awesome. And that's exactly why I wanted Desmond on this call. So, Desmond, I took a look in your system and it does appear your team is deleting bookings. What we'd really recommend is cancelling them instead, because when you delete them they effectively never happened and that's throwing off your statistics."
Should have said"Before we get to the fix, help me see what it costs you now. When the data shows bookings that were in fact released, how far off are your usage-day and revenue-per-event figures, and who leans on those reports? Do these numbers feed your board or audit reporting? About how many hours does your team burn reconciling or correcting them each cycle?"
Next step to progress: On the July 15 adoption review, quantify the deleted-bookings data-integrity pain into a cost number (how far off usage-day and revenue-per-event reporting is, who relies on it, hours per cycle to reconcile), then anchor the FB/catering rollout to a buyer-owned dated go-live consequence and name Noelle Renshu in finance as the decision-maker and approval path for the stalled Northwind payments item, so the expansion gets quantified Impact, a Critical Event, and a mapped Decision.
Critical Event is absent (1.2), now the lowest dimension. No dated event with a forcing consequence exists across four calls; the rep explicitly removes urgency ('we go with your timeline'). On the refined Impact definition Impact is also weak (2.0): the buyer surfaced a real reporting pain (deleted bookings corrupting usage-day and revenue-per-event numbers) but never an impact question was asked, so it stayed personal pain and a reporting wish, never taken into a measurable business consequence.
Pacifica Convention Center (Northwind Lift)Recommendation / Proposal
Pacifica Convention Center (Northwind Lift)Recommendation / Proposal
Deal risk, high: At the recommendation stage the deal is single-threaded through an admin who disclaims authority, Impact is unquantified, and no Critical Event exists, so the chargeable Lift scope has no funder, deadline, or path to sign-off.
Customer said"I don't have much time these days to do that and people... worry, they say one day I'll if I ever get hit by a bus or leave that they'll lean on Rosemary and you a lot more."
Annalise Brockway said"A common story careful, we have a, we have a habit of poaching people like you to come work here, come on as a consultant. So they better watch out."
Should have said"That key-person risk is worth quantifying. How many hours a week do you personally put into building and keeping up these Excel workarounds and custom reports only you know how to run? And if you were out for a month, how many of these reports just stop, and what does upper management lose when the GM/AGM can't pull their forecast or pace numbers? Let's total up the hours and the reporting that breaks, because that cost is the business case for fixing it."
Next step to progress: Book a working session with the AGM and Controller (the named funders) to quantify the cost of Zuri's manual Excel workarounds and key-person risk, then anchor the chart-of-accounts re-implementation to Gideon Sable's last day as the Critical Event so the recommendation gets a deadline and a budget owner.
No Critical Event anywhere across four discovery calls: not one dated event with a forced consequence exists, so the chargeable Lift work (chart-of-accounts re-implementation, GL/journal export) has no deadline pulling it toward sign-off. Latent hooks the buyer raised herself, the sales super-user who left before Christmas and Gideon Sable who built the contract SQL and is 'leaving soon', were never anchored to a date. Impact is also weak: real pain surfaced (manual Excel workarounds, a 'hit by a bus' key-person risk, the 'headache' of disputed damages) but the rep never asked an impact question, so no measurable business outcome was ever articulated.
Arthur J. Milford Convention Center (Vantage Global / AMCC)Stalled
Arthur J. Milford Convention Center (Vantage Global / AMCC)Stalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled at discovery with no quantified Impact and no dated Critical Event, single-threaded to a no-budget champion while the economic buyers no-show, and an external Vantage rebid has frozen fall commitments, so the expansion has no forcing function to close.
Customer said"I want to swap the image that's attached to them and it's been like a year now. I can't work it out... And he said, well, let me get back to you on that. And then it just vanished."
Annalise Brockway said"To have the email? Oh, I'm... I'm guessing he asked for like screenshots and what the company is and all that."
Should have said"A year stuck on a single change is a real cost. Help me size it: how many partner or exhibitor edits are held up by this, how much staff time a month goes to workarounds, and is any exhibitor or partner relationship exposed because their branding is wrong on your portal? That cost is what justifies prioritizing the fix and the payments v2 upgrade."
Next step to progress: Book a 30-minute working session with Rosemary (primary leader) and Noelle or Malika (finance and budget) with the crosswalk pricing in hand, and in it quantify the cost of the year-long unresolved image change and the end-of-support payment portal, then tie that to the Vantage rebid timeline to set a dated decision, converting volunteered pain into a business case the economic buyers can approve.
Pain is strong but Impact is only pain-level (score 2.0): real, vivid pains are on the table across all three calls (4 CSMs in a year, an end-of-support payment portal, an image change unresolved for about a year), yet every one stays personal and operational frustration, never converted into a measurable business outcome. The rep never asks an impact question (what solving this would mean to the business, what happens if nothing changes, to what extent it matters), and the only numbers present are traps (a $25,000 renewal discount and new-packaging pricing), so there is no defensible business case to move off legacy packaging.
Crescent Bay Arena (Aldara)Stalled
Crescent Bay Arena (Aldara)Stalled
Deal risk, high: Dormant 116 days after demos with zero next step, no Critical Event, and unquantified Impact on a deal the buyer said needed deciding in weeks.
Customer said"I mentioned earlier Annalise, our biggest concern is really the financials. We have to make a decision right now today, well not today, but in the next couple of weeks, you know, can we capture the financials in northwind?"
Annalise Brockway said"Yeah, no, no, for sure. And I want to respect everybody's time... tomorrow we'll zero in on the financials side within enterprise since it's definitely more robust, and the forecasting too."
Should have said"That's helpful, Ambrose. When you say a decision in the next couple of weeks, what's driving that window? Is there a particular event, budget cycle, or season you need this financial workflow live for, and what happens operationally if it slides past then? I want to be sure we time implementation to whatever you're accountable to."
Next step to progress: Send a re-engagement note to Ambrose that reopens the financials decision he owned, propose a working session to quantify the Excel and rework pain into cost or time per event, and tie it to a real why-now (concert season, budget lock, or ERP integration milestone) so a dated mutual next step gets set.
Critical Event (1.5, absent): no dated external event with a forced consequence exists. The buyer handed the rep a self-set 'decision in the next couple of weeks' window twice, and both times the rep deferred to the demo agenda instead of mining the why-now. That soft window is decision-intent, not a Critical Event, and the rep has surfaced zero raw material toward one.
Alderon Convention Center (Vantage / Halloway-owned, Northwind Enterprise account)Post-sale / Active
Alderon Convention Center (Vantage / Halloway-owned, Northwind Enterprise account)Post-sale / Active
Deal risk, medium: Recent and warm (16 days since last contact), but the renewal is named yet undated, the implementation is half-finished, and the real signer sits at Vantage corporate above the GM, so there is no Critical Event or quantified Impact driving the renewal.
Customer said"I know you all are kind of in the middle of renewal and other stuff."
Annalise Brockway said"Rosemary (the rep) mentioned this herself in passing while walking through who handles money, then shifted to scheduling status meetings; she never asked when the renewal date is or what happens if it slips."
Should have said"When does the current contract come up for renewal, and what deadline are you working back from? If the GL integration and that final module aren't live by renewal, does that shift the conversation internally? I want to be sure we have the right pieces done by the date that actually matters to you."
Next step to progress: Have the account manager (Annalise) book a renewal-anchoring call to fix the contract renewal date, name the consequence if the GL integration and last module are not live by it, and surface who at Vantage corporate signs off above Ottilie, converting the named-but-undated renewal into a real Critical Event.
Critical Event is absent: a renewal is named out loud ('you guys are kind of going through renewal') but left completely unanchored, with no renewal date, no consequence of inaction, and no co-created timeline, so nothing is driving urgency on the account.
Emil ZaborowskiEmil Zaborowski runs a strong front half of SPICED (Pain 3.9) but stalls on Critical Event and Impact. Coaching Critical Event first will move the most deals.
Cheval Public Facilities DistrictDiscovery
Deal risk, medium: Warm and engaged but stalling, 34 days since last contact, Impact absent at a late discovery stage, no Critical Event and no dated mutual next step, so the rich pain inventory has no quantified business case or forcing function to drive expansion
Customer said"It would be great if a lot of it just auto pulled because I do go in there and enter like the rent, the forecasted rent. And like those are all service orders, it seems like there should be a way for that to pull across."
Emil Zaborowski said"That's great. What else?"
Should have said"That makes sense, and I'd like to put a number on it. Walk me through a normal week: how many events do you re-key those details for, and how many minutes does each one cost you? If it's, say, 20 events at 10 minutes each, that's a few hours a week of manual entry we could hand back to you, plus the error risk when numbers don't match the service orders. Does that range sound about right?"
Next step to progress: Book a recommendations-readout call with Marcus Ellery and Bertram that converts the top two or three pains (manual contract and template re-keying, leads stuck in personal Outlook with no team visibility) into sized hours-per-week and dollar costs, ranks them, and ties the lead-capture SOP to their quarterly director report as a dated Critical Event with a mutual next step
Critical Event is absent (1.2) and is now the primary coachable gap. No dated event with a forced consequence appears anywhere across the calls. The buyer handed a soft timeline ('we'll get back to an SOP at some point... playing catch-up') and an org driver (turnover), the natural seam to co-create a CE tied to a board or fiscal-year reporting date, but the rep pivoted away, leaving every recommendation with no forcing function.
Other deals (10), click to inspect
Rafael M. Duarte Convention Center (CSEV / Visit Rio Alto)Recommendation / Proposal
Rafael M. Duarte Convention Center (CSEV / Visit Rio Alto)Recommendation / Proposal
Deal risk, medium: Engagement is warm and very active so dormancy is not a concern, but at a late recommendation stage there is still no Critical Event (1.3) and no mapped buying or budget process, leaving the rollout without a forcing function across change-averse operations.
Customer said"It could be July of 27 or October of 27. But, you know, we could take down that tree. They'd just keep hacking away at it."
Emil Zaborowski said"Yes. So, I think that we would be, we've been able to shape what operations does with the information we hand them over the years."
Should have said"That timing helps. Is there an event or a date on your calendar that this has to be working by? For instance, if we aimed go-live at [a named characteristic event or the start of your busy season], what happens to your team if it is not ready then? Let's pick one real event as our proof case and work backward to a date, so we both know what we are driving to."
Next step to progress: Co-create a Critical Event by anchoring a dated go-live to one named characteristic event as the validation proof case, then secure written buyer agreement on a backward-planned implementation timeline and the CORA budget owner for the spend decision.
Critical Event (1.3, absent), across four deep discovery calls no dated event-with-consequence has been surfaced or co-created to drive the implementation timeline. The rep deliberately avoids manufacturing urgency, so the deal has no forcing function. This is the most coachable gap because the buyer handed the rep an open timeframe ('July of 27 or October of 27') that was a ready-made opening to anchor a go-live to a named characteristic event as the proof case.
MVCC (Northwind Lift engagement)Recommendation / Proposal
MVCC (Northwind Lift engagement)Recommendation / Proposal
Deal risk, high: Late-stage recommend deal with no Critical Event, unquantified Impact, buyer hesitancy, and the named decision driver (Ilse Doverton) bailing on the readout and never rejoining, leaving status calls drifting with no committed decision path.
Customer said"So, they get instructed because we don't do it much, we tried doing it, we didn't even do it this fiscal year. We did it last fiscal year."
Emil Zaborowski said"What's the process, for the ones that are accruals?"
Should have said"That sounds like it bites hardest at fiscal year-end close, when is your next full year-end and would having the periods pre-built and accruals automated ahead of that date change whether this is a fire or a non-event for you?"
Next step to progress: Get Ilse Doverton back to the table for a working session that quantifies the cost of the top-ranked problems (month-end data-entry hours, reconciliation rework, year-end exposure) and anchors a dated go-live to the next fiscal-year-end close, converting the open recommendations into a buyer-owned decision with a forcing function.
Critical Event (1.3, absent): no dated buyer-owned event with a forced consequence exists anywhere in the four-call sequence, so the recommend-stage deal has nothing anchoring a decision timeline. The richest fix is latent: the buyer named a fiscal-year-end close they skipped, the one place a real consequence (year-end close, audit) lives, and the rep pivoted to mechanics instead of converting it into a buyer-owned deadline.
Explore Ardenne (Ardenne Convention Centre + Expo Centre)Discovery
Explore Ardenne (Ardenne Convention Centre + Expo Centre)Discovery
Deal risk, high: Single-threaded to a working-level champion with no thread to the economic-buyer GMs, no quantified Impact, no Critical Event, and the last contact reverted to a CS status call rather than progressing the expansion, with buyers already calling it cost-prohibitive.
Customer said"I saw that you guys do have an early adoption. Behind the scenes. Look. And, I figured the sooner we get going on this, the better, we're also reviewing our budget. So it's a good moment to take a look at our licensing."
Emil Zaborowski said"Absolutely... mr. Ansel. Yes, a pleasure to meet you. Would you mind doing a, I guess a quick intro on your end?"
Should have said"Rosemary gave Emil two timing hooks: the early-adoption program and a live budget cycle. The ideal move turns one into a dated event carrying a consequence: 'When does your budget for the next cycle actually lock, and what is the last date a decision has to be approved to land in that window?' and 'The early-adopter pricing carries a cutoff date; miss it and the entitlements shift to standard tier pricing.' That fixes a date and a real cost of waiting, rather than jumping straight to introductions."
Next step to progress: Book a dated executive review that brings in the GMs who sign the budget, and at that meeting quantify one Impact (RFPs lost to slow turnaround, each event's value, finance hours burned) and co-create a Critical Event by anchoring the budget-lock date and the early-adopter pricing cutoff, fixing the deal's Impact, Critical Event, and single-threading gaps in one move.
Critical Event (1.5, absent) is the lowest dimension: the deal has no dated forcing function. The buyer volunteered two timing hooks, an active budget review and the Northwind early-adopter program, and the rep converted neither into a date with a consequence, so the deal will drift on leadership's timeline. Impact (2.0) is pain only, not impact: the buyers surfaced real cost pain (cost-prohibitive, struggle to articulate value to the GMs, not using the system to its potential), but no one ever articulated a measurable business outcome, and the rep never asked an impact question, so the pain never became a number the internal case could use.
Saguaro County Stadium District / Verde Sports ComplexPost-sale / Active
Saguaro County Stadium District / Verde Sports ComplexPost-sale / Active
Deal risk, high: Customer openly stated they will go out to competitive RFP for a replacement booking system, the renewal Critical Event has no date, Impact is unquantified, and the rep never engaged the churn signal.
Customer said"We are currently right now in a one year extension with you guys. And then we'll go back out to RFP again or RFP for an overall booking system. And I can tell you that's something for us that's really important to land, something like that. That's a little bit more user friendly."
Emil Zaborowski said"I love that. Speaking of goals and initiatives, are there other ones you're thinking about that you'd like to see happen or anything you want to accomplish inside the software?"
Should have said"That's important to hear, and thank you for being candid about the RFP. So we earn both the renewal and the long-term decision: when you and the team assess a booking system at RFP, what are the top three or four things you'll really judge the options on, and how would you rank them right now? You said user-friendly sits at the top, so what makes a system 'user-friendly enough' to win, and what is the current friction costing in staff time or lost revenue? And as you weigh us against a new platform versus simply staying put, what would make standing still the wrong call?"
Next step to progress: Book a dedicated renewal-defense call with Noelle Ivers and the budget owner to pin the RFP open and close dates and extension expiry as a dated Critical Event, establish and rank their decision criteria beyond user-friendly, and quantify the Impact of the cost-recovery data gap and manual reconciliation hours so the renewal case is tied to dollars before the RFP opens.
Decision Criteria (1.5): the customer openly disclosed an active RFP for a replacement booking system and named 'more user-friendly' as what matters, yet neither rep ever established, ranked, weighted, or impact-tied any decision criteria, or surfaced the competing options (renew vs. replace vs. status quo) at the exact moment they were most discoverable.
The Florentine / Corso Silver Mesa (Expo)Recommendation / Proposal
The Florentine / Corso Silver Mesa (Expo)Recommendation / Proposal
Deal risk, high: Single-threaded on an operational champion with no finance/IT signer engaged, no quantified Impact and no anchored Critical Event on a deal two years in the making, and the buyer has openly hesitated (I do not even know if it is worth it) on the expansion piece.
Customer said"How much time is expo spending doing all of this by hand? / I can't even picture how much they're sinking into it... But like I said, I'll get their step by step process."
Emil Zaborowski said"The rep asks the cost-of-problem question, gets a non-answer ('I can't even imagine'), and jumps straight to 'Number two was department selected on the booking' without anchoring any quantity."
Should have said"Stay on it and co-quantify: 'Let's put a rough figure on it so I can build the business case. Cordelia is sending over her step-by-step. Once you have it, can we tally how many of these split-out WSCV orders she handles a week, how many minutes each loop-and-reconcile eats, and how often the paid-vs-net-due mismatch triggers a chase? Even a rough range, say X hours a week across the team, times a loaded rate, gives us the cost of leaving this alone, and that's what justifies the workflow-builder investment you said you weren't sure was worth it.'"
Next step to progress: Get the updated order form in front of the economic buyers: co-quantify the WSCV manual cost with Cordelia's step-by-step data into a dollar ROI figure, anchor the signed-order-form date to the Meridian Trust to MRB closure (targeted April/May), and request a working session with Ottoline/finance (Errol) so the people who actually sign are in the room rather than champion-relayed.
Pain is surfaced but no measurable business Impact. Across three calls Wilhelmina names deep, buyer-owned pain (the years-old WSCV multi-day F&B service-charge/payment-split nightmare that 'infuriates me,' manual standalone refunds with security exposure) but it stays emotional and personal, never converted into a business consequence the company can measure. The rep asks one cost-of-problem question in Call 3 ('How much time is expo putting towards doing all this manually?'), accepts 'I can't even imagine,' and moves on, so the deal carries no dollar, no hour figure, and no measurable outcome. The only numbers present are business-size/volume and pricing ($100M card volume, +140 in ACH/wire/check, 10-15 cents/transaction), which describe the company and the price, not the cost of the problem. Result: pain without Impact, and Wilhelmina's own 'I don't even know if it's worth it' hesitation left unanswered.
Seabright Convention & Visitors Bureau (SBCC)Recommendation / Proposal
Seabright Convention & Visitors Bureau (SBCC)Recommendation / Proposal
Deal risk, medium: No Critical Event and unquantified Impact at the pricing stage, with leadership explicitly hesitant to add spend over the unresolved 3K escrow credit and prior payments distrust, though a dated June 3 next step and warming sentiment keep it from high.
Customer said"an upsell or a fresh contract or new packaging or extra cost is really going to require a lot of conversation with our leadership because last time, you know, like I mentioned, we just signed this three year contract that we're on"
Emil Zaborowski said"And I recognize when we first spoke, I remember there was some frustration about the nwpay situation and the extra cost too. We covered that. So that's why I just want to land you guys the deepest discount I can."
Should have said"That makes sense. When does your leadership set next year's budget, and is there a date a decision has to land by to make this cycle rather than slipping to the next? If we miss that window, what does waiting cost you in deferred analytics value? Let's anchor our pricing and the June 3 deep dive to that date so we're working toward a real decision point instead of an open-ended exploration."
Next step to progress: Before sending the quote, anchor it to the leadership budget cycle: ask the date a decision must land to make this cycle versus slipping a year, quantify the analytics and payments Impact in dollars or hours saved, and present Pro vs Pro-plus-analytics options at the June 3 deep dive tied to that date so pricing lands against a real decision point, not open-ended exploration.
Critical Event (1.5, absent): no dated, decision-forcing event exists, and the rep made no attempt to surface or co-create one even as the deal moved into pricing. The buyer handed the thread (any spend requires a leadership budget conversation) and the rep pivoted straight to discounting instead of anchoring to a budget-cycle date with a consequence of slipping a year.
River Bend Sentinels / Longbow Events (Northwind renewal)Pricing / Negotiation
River Bend Sentinels / Longbow Events (Northwind renewal)Pricing / Negotiation
Deal risk, medium: Late-stage renewal in active redlines with no quantified Impact, an unpinned expiry date, a IFSA-June blocker, and history of five-month drift, so add-ons risk being cut to a flat status-quo landing even though threading and engagement are strong and dormancy is low at about 25 days.
Customer said"that was the whole point, purely to be able to run a report that says here is everything that changed from today to tomorrow on this event, send that out to your department instead of having to send complete updates and call out every one of those changes... what we're doing is working it's just, we're always looking to find ways to be more efficient, do less data entry and give our team better resources."
Emil Zaborowski said"Running off an extra two reams of paper every day for people."
Should have said"That re-sending of complete updates rather than just the changes, how much time does it cost your team per event, and across how many events and people? If the change tracker eliminated that, what would it free your team up to do, and is that worth more to the business than the 7,500 list price?"
Next step to progress: Before sending the redline turn back, requantify the change-log and add-ons against the buyer's own efficiency lead (admin hours per event lost re-sending full update emails versus one change report, times people and events) so the expansion modules carry an Impact-backed value case, and pin the exact 23-to-26 contract expiry to a dated mutual sign-by plan so the renewal Critical Event is hard, not soft.
Impact (2.5, weak): the rep never asked a single diagnostic impact question across either call at pricing/contract stage. The buyer's one efficiency lead (less data entry, a single change report instead of mailing full updates) was reduced to a 'two reams of paper a day' joke instead of quantified. The renewal is negotiating price and terms with no measurable business outcome attached, while the buyer defends status quo ('what we're doing is working'), so the change-log ($9,000) and other add-ons have no value anchor.
Barrow-Lindqvist Inc. (BLI Expo)Discovery
Barrow-Lindqvist Inc. (BLI Expo)Discovery
Deal risk, high: Active churn signals, shows defecting to Show Grid while Northwind deprioritizes the showgrid dealbreaker, deal single-threaded below the deciders with unquantified impact and the Jan 2027 renewal never operationalized.
Customer said"They won't renew unless they see a change. So we've already got another show moving to show grid. It's already in the motions and we're going to lose more and more if that doesn't change... So they will not sign another three year, maybe one year to get us to process through."
Emil Zaborowski said"Yeah. We discussed it as well. It felt like it was more, it was less, it was less about functionality and more like just the user experience itself."
Should have said"Who actually signs that renewal, Alban or the officers? What exactly would they need to see, and by when, to commit to another three years rather than one? And could I meet with them directly so I'm solving for the people holding the decision?"
Next step to progress: Secure a working session with president Alban and the officers to map the renewal decision and budget, present a dated showgrid roadmap commitment, and quantify the at-risk renewal value plus revenue of the three shows already lost to Show Grid, closing on a written mutual action plan against the Jan 31, 2027 critical event.
Decision Process is the deal's most coachable gap (2.5, weak): two discovery calls into a renewal-defense deal with a hard Jan 31, 2027 contract expiry, and Emil is effectively SINGLE-THREADED at the power level. The engaged contacts (Petra, 20-year admin/champion; Annalise, project manager) are users, not deciders. The actual deciders, president 'Alban', the unnamed 'officers', and the end-clients demanding Show Grid parity, are unreached, and the budget owner and renewal approval path were never surfaced.
Great Lakes State Fair ParkPricing / Negotiation
Great Lakes State Fair ParkPricing / Negotiation
Deal risk, high: Explicit competitive churn threat near $200k with zero quantified Impact at a late pricing stage, an undated Critical Event, and a single-threaded, price-only frame on a six-figure renewal.
Customer said"I have been a really big advocate of, like, how else can we use this system to be sure we're maximizing, you know, our efforts inside what we've got available to us."
Emil Zaborowski said"Yeah."
Should have said"That's exactly what I want to help with. If we got your usage maxed out and folded in those a la carte extras, what would that be worth to you, in staff hours saved or budget you'd avoid spending, and how would your team actually measure that win to justify it internally?"
Next step to progress: Bring back a right-sized package that drops the financials and room-block modules they say they will never use, and re-anchor the conversation on quantified Impact (staff hours saved and budget avoided from the modules they will actually use) so value, not the raw $35k increase, justifies the price, then co-create the renewal date as a dated Critical Event with the buyer.
Impact (1.5, absent): the rep never asked a single impact question across either call while actively negotiating a $35k increase on a $150k contract, so there is zero quantified business value under the deal to defend the price against an explicit 'we'll look at alternatives' churn threat.
Harborview Convention CenterDemo / Evaluation
Harborview Convention CenterDemo / Evaluation
Deal risk, medium: Sentiment cooling from a warm finance champion to a skeptical ops team, the demo hit an unsolved make-or-break duplication requirement, and the deal is single-threaded on authority through gatekeeper Ozias and City procurement with no impact quantified, no critical event, and no decision process mapped.
Customer said"Will the city go, oh, it's only two years later and you want to redo the whole contract like I? ... Yeah. How does that work?"
Emil Zaborowski said"Completely get it."
Should have said"That's exactly what I want to understand. Walk me through it: who at the city actually signs off on a contract change, and how did the original procurement run? Who owns this budget line internally, is that you, Ozias, or someone above you? And what's your renewal or fiscal window, because that tells us whether we're aiming at this cycle or the next one."
Next step to progress: Book a working session with gatekeeper Ozias and the City of Harborview budget owner to map the procurement and approval path, quantify the duplicate-work-order admin burden (hundreds of pages, 6 CSMs no admin) into a dollar and hours impact case, and tie a decision to the fiscal or contract-renewal window so the evaluation has a real critical event.
Decision Process is unmapped two calls in: the account is multi-threaded by attendance (9 ops/finance contacts) but single-threaded on authority through gatekeeper 'Ozias' and ultimately the City of Harborview's procurement process, with no economic/budget owner named and no decision criteria, path, or timeline surfaced. The rep was handed the richest authority signal in the sequence (JC raising the city contract-revamp constraint) and deflected with 'Totally get it' instead of mapping who decides, the budget owner, and the renewal/fiscal window.
Priya RaghavanPriya Raghavan runs a strong front half of SPICED (Situation 3.7) but stalls on Critical Event and Impact. Coaching Critical Event first will move the most deals.
Sable Regional Visitors Authority (SRVA)Post-sale / Active
Customer said"it doesn't export any formulas. So sometimes I'm then having to go in and, you know, drop formulas into the columns... but I always go back through to audit and make sure what the sales people put in the cdf fields is right... then I'll have to manually update that number"
Priya Raghavan said"The reason I keep pushing... I'm trying to find where there's extra work happening that doesn't involve... it's not adding value, and 'that is the definition of non value added work.' He named the pain perfectly but never asked what it costs."
Should have said"Put a number on it right there: 'How many hours a week do that Excel rebuild and CDF audit eat, and how often do you actually catch an error? If it runs, say, 4 hours a week across the team, that comes to roughly 200 hours a year re-keying numbers the system should hand you already. Does that sound right?' That turns a named pain into a credible cost-of-problem figure the configuration work can be justified against."
Next step to progress: Convert one named pain (the Excel re-keying plus CDF audit thread) into a sized business case, quantify hours times frequency times people, anchor it to the live FY27 budget close as a dated milestone, and book a working session with Leopold and Barnaby to lock the configuration scope and an owned next step
Critical Event is ABSENT (1.3) and is now the lowest dimension: no dated event with a real consequence forces a decision about Northwind. The live FY27 budget cycle was handed to the rep and treated as a recurring cadence, never probed for a lock date or the cost of missing it; other dates (insurance 30 days out, payment 45 days prior) are SRVA's rules for THEIR clients, not a deadline timing a SRVA decision. Impact also remains weak (2.0): real, repeatable manual pains were surfaced (Excel re-keying, CDF audits, manual variance math, an annual hand-built turnover report, even labeled 'non value added work'), but the rep never asked an impact question and no measurable business outcome was articulated, so it stays pain, not impact.
Other deals (11), click to inspect
Cascadia Roundup / Northfield CentreRecommendation / Proposal
Cascadia Roundup / Northfield CentreRecommendation / Proposal
Deal risk, medium: Active and recent (10 days since last call), but a late-stage recommendation rests on unquantified Impact, near-absent Decision Criteria, no Critical Event, and a single-threaded decision around Aldous's vision with no surfaced approval path.
Customer said"Proposals? Okay? Because I've got to load everything into the system with the discount. So I'm adding all those service orders, then I have to send that on to Perrine to review. If Perrine comes back and says, no, we want, we don't want to discount this or this is how it's going to go. Then I've got to redo them service orders, then I've got to pull it into word. Then I've got to change. I've got to add a front page, add a text box, put the dates in, change all, the wording, of the proposal and then export it to the PDF before it goes to a client. So it's just, yeah, it's a process to do it that I don't feel like it's great."
Priya Raghavan said"What else we? (Ignacio jumped straight to the next topic, the discount-amount-in-service-order issue, without asking how long the Word rebuild takes, how many proposals go out per week, or what that time is worth. He only acknowledged it later with 'I appreciate that clarification' once the workflow was re-explained.)"
Should have said"That sounds like genuine time lost on every single proposal. About how long does that Word rebuild take from start to finish, and how many proposals does the team push out weekly? If it runs, say, an hour apiece, recovering that hour across the team, what would that be worth to you?"
Next step to progress: Before the recommendation lands, run one quantifying pass with Clementine and Aldous on the two highest-value pains (manual proposal-to-Word rebuild and demand forecasting / RevPAM), cost them in hours and dollars, then convert the customer's stated priorities into a ranked, impact-tagged recommendation framework and present it to Aldous as the economic buyer who reports KPIs to the CEO and board, asking him to name an approval path and a target date.
Decision Criteria is near-absent (1.5) and is now the lowest actionable gap. The customer handed the rep an explicit invitation to prioritize ('rein us in, come up with fruitful recommendations') and named implicit value criteria (keep everything in-system, real-time data, build a revenue-management practice, cut manual rework), but the rep never crystallized these into a ranked, weighted, impact-tied recommendation framework, defaulting to 'that's a product enhancement, we'll pass it to product.' Impact is also weak (2.0): across four calls the rep captured rich, specific pain (manual proposal-to-Word rebuild, Excel forecasting outside the system, discounts not amortized to space, undigestible concierge logs) but it stayed pain, never converted into a measurable business outcome, and the rep never asked a single impact question. The big numbers in the deal ($15M quarterly booking goal, $20M convention book) describe the size of the business, not the cost of any problem.
Everstar (EEG - Everstar Entertainment Group)Demo / Evaluation
Everstar (EEG - Everstar Entertainment Group)Demo / Evaluation
Deal risk, medium: Recent activity keeps it alive, but three demos with no Critical Event, unquantified Impact, and no dated next step make it comfortable-but-not-compelled and prone to plateau, compounded by champion Emeka departing.
Customer said"I think for them to succeed and I think our job probably over the next week or so or you tell me the timeline is to work out what is the result we're after? Because we've just walked you through the system we use right now. And even I want to know well, what is the result we're after? Like what's the ideal result?"
Priya Raghavan said"For the time you're going to put our notes together and we'll circle back after we've had a chance to review with our product team on where we can help. Okay?"
Should have said"That ideal-result framing is exactly right, Bianca, and you just offered to set the timeline, so let's use it. What's really driving the date? Is there a point the legacy TXR/R2 system has to be gone, a budget cycle you're up against, or a go-live you've committed to? And if this isn't decided by then, what breaks for the team, especially with Emeka leaving in a few weeks? Let's set a date and a consequence on it together right now."
Next step to progress: Book a working session with Silas, Wilkin, and Bianca to co-create a dated Critical Event (legacy LGX/R2 sunset, budget cycle, or target go-live) and quantify the Impact using the volunteered pain (18 to 25 cumbersome touches per day times loaded rate), then convert it into a dated mutual action plan toward a scoped proposal.
Critical Event is absent (1.3): across three demos spanning Feb to May, no dated, decision-forcing event (legacy LGX/R2 sunset, budget cycle, go-live) was ever surfaced or co-created, so the deal advances with no path to close. This is the deepest discovery miss and it compounds every other gap.
NRCC (Northwind expansion / Lift)Recommendation / Proposal
NRCC (Northwind expansion / Lift)Recommendation / Proposal
Deal risk, medium: Loyal 10-year expansion warming and only 39 days since last call, but stalling at recommend stage with Impact unquantified, no buyer-owned Critical Event, criteria unranked, and no dated next step or proposal booked.
Customer said"I think there's some low hanging fruit in here like you've prioritized that would be pretty quick and simple to knock out... The more labor intensive piece is when we get to our event order as a collective whole. But obviously I see the benefit in making those changes to make things a bit more efficient."
Priya Raghavan said"The second one is closer to what we had in mind... the recommendations are the bite sized pieces, or the work packages we'd assemble, bundling a couple of those recommendations into a single project."
Should have said"Before we bundle these into projects, let's put a number on the event-order work. Roughly how many hours per event do Saoirse and Anneliese lose stitching the room diagrams together in Adobe Acrobat today, and across how many events a month? And Curtis, how long does the post-event reconciliation take you each time? If we can size what that inefficiency costs you in hours, we can show exactly what the event-order revamp is worth and rank the projects against real dollars instead of feel."
Next step to progress: Book a dated scoping-and-pricing session with Ramona and Milo to answer the money question: quantify one live cost (Adobe event-order stitching hours per event times events per month, or the months-stuck payment blocking the books), tie it to the July 2027 remodel closure as a buyer-owned by-when, and return a priced project bundle for sign-off.
Impact is only surfaced pain, not measurable business impact (2.0). Across all three calls the buyer names abundant emotional and operational frustration (stuck payment since September, manual report-pulling, proposal rework, hours of Adobe event-order stitching, 'it takes so long to do something') but never a measurable business outcome, and no rep ever asks an impact question. The customer literally signals 'Milo and I are going to ask the money question' and the rep answers logistics about bundling instead of asking what solving any of this would mean to the business in time, cost, or revenue.
Cardinal Metropolitan Convention Center (CDMCC)Stalled
Cardinal Metropolitan Convention Center (CDMCC)Stalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled deal: white-hot 'sign tomorrow' intent cooled to a renewal pushed to next year behind Lift, 52 days dormant, single-threaded with finance signer Perpetua never on a call, no Critical Event and unquantified Impact.
Customer said"But the time. Savings is really the main, yeah."
Priya Raghavan said"I mean, a massive time savings where it just flows, that's the value of time right there."
Should have said"That's the one that matters most, isn't it. Help me put a number on it: when you spent three to four hours videotaping and sketching layouts for that single event, what did that cost you in a typical month, and where else could that time go? And if we rank what you're judging this on, where does time savings land against cost and against integration with DocuSign? I want to build the package around your number-one, rather than just bolting on modules. And honestly, if doing nothing and staying on your current setup still got the job done, what would have to be true?"
Next step to progress: Book a 20-minute working call with Winifred and Perpetua (the finance linchpin) to convert the buyer's own contract-expiry into a co-set decide-by date tied to when Lift wraps, and quantify the time-savings Impact against the 3 to 5 hours Winifred named per event, annualized, so finance has a measurable business case before the renewal slips into 2027.
Impact (2.0, Pain only), the buyer surfaced vivid personal pain ('I spent three or four hours just videotaping... Where has this been my entire life') but no measurable business outcome was ever articulated, and the rep never asked an impact question, so the pain was never converted into a business consequence the company could measure or that finance could act on.
Cascadia Summit Convention CentreStalled
Cascadia Summit Convention CentreStalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled and dormant at 100 days since last call with no calls in 90 days, no dated Critical Event, and unquantified Impact at a late-stage demo, so momentum is entirely on the buyer's timeline.
Customer said"If we can get northwind payments running and people are paying us all the deposits they're supposed to be paying us up front. The amount of outstanding receivables should be going down because they can pay earlier."
Priya Raghavan said"Priya agrees and moves along: "Let's get the low pay" / "If things change, just let me know." She never asks how big the receivables are or what the delay is costing."
Should have said"Roughly how much sits in outstanding receivables at any given point, and how long are deposits going unpaid today? If Northwind Payments pulled even a portion of that in sooner, what would that free up for you in a quarter? Let me put a number on it so we can show the team the payback."
Next step to progress: Re-engage Xiomara and Guinevere with a dated working session that pins the contract renewal date and frames forced migration to new packaging as the Critical Event, then quantify the receivables Impact (how much sits in outstanding receivables, how long deposits stay unpaid, what earlier payment frees per quarter) so Northwind Payments has a payback number and a deadline rather than a couple-years-away drift.
No dated Critical Event with a buyer-side consequence exists across three calls. Real pains are on the record (slow deposits and outstanding receivables, manual paid-status toggling, double-entry of room bookings in Outlook and Northwind, years of failed profit-calculator attempts), and the buyer even surfaced the one real timing mechanic herself (forced migration to new packaging at renewal), but Priya confirmed it then immediately defused the urgency ("a couple years still") rather than pinning the renewal date and attaching a cost of waiting. Every close is a one-sided rep promise. The deal drifts on the buyer's timeline. Note: Impact also stays weak, the buyer surfaced pain but never a measurable business outcome, and the rep never asked an impact question.
Kestrel County / The Homestead Events ComplexStalled
Kestrel County / The Homestead Events ComplexStalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled and dormant about 4.5 months since the last call with no dated next step, no Critical Event, unquantified Impact on real expansion appetite, and the budget approver never engaged.
Customer said"Because the service desk still can't confirm for me that I'm not impacted. So, just like, I'm a little worried that come June, something we rely on just vanishes and we don't even know what it is."
Priya Raghavan said"No, no, that shouldn't get affected. Okay? But I'll double check just to be sure."
Should have said"That is exactly the kind of dated risk we should get ahead of together. Let me make sure I have it right: there is an integration that, as of June, you have been told may stop working, and if it does, your journal entries stop exporting to your financial system. Roswitha, what happens to your month-end close if that breaks in June? Let us put a hard date on getting this confirmed in writing before June, and I will tie the answer to whether the new packaging or Northwind Payments removes that fragility altogether. Can we agree to settle this by a specific date so it is not hanging over you?"
Next step to progress: Book a working session that converts the buyer-raised forecasting pain into quantified Impact, asking what hours per budget cycle and what an inaccurate forecast cost across the 6-7 manual reports, then tie a module decision (venue desk plus Northwind Payments) to a dated milestone such as the event-lawn go-live this year or the TableSet 2027 expiry, and pull the unnamed managing director budget approver above Hedwig into that conversation.
Critical Event (1.5): no decision-forcing event exists. Every dated cue is a calendar or operational milestone (TableSet expiry in '27, event-lawn go-live this year, amphitheater operational in '28, contract 2024-2029) or seller-manufactured urgency ('this would be the time,' 'big push to new packaging'). The one buyer-raised dated-event-with-consequence ('come June something's going to disappear that we use') was reassured away as an error instead of converted into a decision point. No deadline ties any expansion to a buy-by-when.
Ardent Dynamics (Horizon Center)Stalled
Ardent Dynamics (Horizon Center)Stalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled and dormant (about 123 days no contact) on a single-threaded, rep-de-urgentized expansion with absent Impact, no buyer-owned Pain, and no Critical Event tying the August renewal to a consequence.
Customer said"I think it'll help a lot with kind of how they handle their day to day across all of these events. So, yeah, that'll be a big, plus big, nice thing to have for sure."
Priya Raghavan said"Really great for you guys."
Should have said"That's great to hear. To make sure we scope this right for the renewal, can I ask, what does running those events day to day cost the team now? Roughly how many hours a week across how many people, or where do delays actually hurt you? If the integration took that away, what would solving it be worth to the business?"
Next step to progress: Book a working session well ahead of the August renewal with Sindre plus Vesna, Thackeray, and procurement, and open it with an Impact question that quantifies what managing events day to day costs the team (hours, errors, turnaround), so the Insight Data upsell and renewal anchor to a measurable business outcome rather than a feature tour.
Impact is absent. The rep never asked an impact question in either call and the ADYN buyer never named a measurable business outcome; both sessions are roadmap/feature walkthroughs steering toward an August renewal, so the Insight Data upsell and the renewal have zero quantified value to anchor to.
Windrose Cultural CenterExpansion
Windrose Cultural CenterExpansion
Deal risk, medium: No hardened Critical Event and unquantified Impact at the paperwork stage, with the buyer-floated July 1 go-live now imminent and 38 days of silence since the last call while the order form remains unsigned, so the timeline is slipping despite strong engagement and sentiment.
Customer said"What do you think realistically? Like could we and would we have everything up and running by July first?"
Priya Raghavan said"I think that would be tight. Okay. I think it'd be tight. I think web lead, maybe event portal just depends on how fast you guys can move to, right? ... So my suggestion is, let me start the paperwork. Let's get it finished and signed. That way we can get you in the queue and get you moving as fast as possible."
Should have said"Help me understand July first, what lands on or near that date for your team? You mentioned rebuilding the team and bringing temps in across the next 30 to 70 days. Is the aim to have the web lead form and event portal live before the new coordinators start, so they learn the new way on day one rather than the old way twice? If July first slips, what does that cost you, in rework or in onboarding new hires onto a process you are about to retire?"
Next step to progress: Re-engage Colleen and signer Theo Barrigan this week to send and get the event portal plus web lead form order form signed, anchoring it to the July 1 go-live so the new coordinators onboard onto the new process from day one, and quantify the data-entry hours saved across their $15M event operation to justify signing now and clear the 3-week implementation queue.
Critical Event (2.0, weak): No CE exists yet. The buyer floated a target date (July 1) and named real change drivers (team overhaul, new hires onboarding in 30-60 days, LA28 RFP volume), but the rep treated July 1 as a feasibility question ("that would be tight") instead of attaching a decide-by-X-or-else consequence. The raw material for a forcing function is in the buyer's situation but was left as an aspirational timeline.
Aventine Live / SU Camden AthleticsDiscovery
Aventine Live / SU Camden AthleticsDiscovery
Deal risk, medium: 52 days dormant and trending toward stall, with no Critical Event, the economic buyer (SU Camden) never in the room, and only an undated next step, warmth that risks cooling.
Customer said"So there's a lot of conversation that needs to happen, but the goal is to say, all right, well, if we're going to take over this piece of the business, we need these tools and here's how we're going to do it more efficiently and give them the suggestions and then also know the add on cost that."
Priya Raghavan said"Correct."
Should have said"When does Aventine Live formally become the first point of contact for those premium spaces? Let's put that go-live date on the calendar, because every week beyond it that the web-to-lead form and end-to-end booking sit idle is external-event revenue you cannot capture. Let's work backward from that date and get Isadora and the SU Camden team on a call within the next two weeks, so the tools are ready before the takeover goes live."
Next step to progress: Schedule a dated joint call within two weeks that pulls Isadora and the SU Camden stakeholders (the economic buyer) into the room, anchor the Aventine Live takeover of SU Camden premium-space sales to a go-live date as a Critical Event, and use that call to size the un-booked external-event revenue so Impact is quantified before any proposal.
Critical Event (1.5, absent): the live Aventine Live takeover of SU Camden's premium-space sales is the natural forcing function, but it was never pinned to a go-live date with a cost-of-not-being-ready consequence, leaving the deal with no timeline and no forcing function.
Bay Harbor Convention Center Corporation (BHCCC)Stalled
Bay Harbor Convention Center Corporation (BHCCC)Stalled
Deal risk, high: 90 days dormant after a single demo day, no quantified Impact, no dated Critical Event, and an order form that was offered but never advanced.
Customer said"So, we don't currently pass those fees along to our clients. That would be a new cost for them to take on. And who keeps those fees? Do you hold onto them or do they come back to us?"
Priya Raghavan said"Fintan answered the mechanics, walking into the payments dashboard to break down the surcharge math (the 367.60 payer fee vs the 428 processing fee), without ever asking what the current fee burden costs BHCCC or what a switch would save."
Should have said"Pause and ask the impact question: 'Right now you're eating those processing fees yourselves. Roughly how much is that per month or per year across your event volume, and what would getting that off your books mean for the business?' That converts a fee objection into a measurable cost-of-current-state and savings number."
Next step to progress: Re-engage Nadia and Fenwick directly with the promised order form, but anchor it by quantifying the processing fees BHCCC currently absorbs (sized Impact) and proposing a specific go-live date to create a Critical Event, converting buyer momentum into a committed, dated mutual action plan.
Impact is absent (1.5): the deal is at demo/order-form stage on a product-led payments walkthrough, yet no measurable business outcome is ever tied to BHCCC's situation. The buyer twice opened a live cost thread (they currently absorb all processing fees themselves) and the team answered with surcharge mechanics instead of quantifying what that cost is today or what switching would save.
Harbor Line Sports & Entertainment (Granite Field Stadium)Demo / Evaluation
Harbor Line Sports & Entertainment (Granite Field Stadium)Demo / Evaluation
Deal risk, medium: Warm and deeply multi-threaded but structurally under-qualified two demos in, Impact is unquantified, the Kestrel-season go-live is an unconfirmed Critical Event, the buyer set a self-imposed full-package gate, and there is no dated next step or named budget owner.
Customer said"if our source of truth really is now a text saying, hey, you're not getting the notifications, I'm texting you... those arriving as a text aren't going into a system to check a box. So for me, it's got to be the full package before we roll it out to the team."
Priya Raghavan said"The reps (Kester and Priya) let the seller-side story do the work; Kester states the consequence for the buyer himself ('you don't need to go and walk the event or second guess... I know that's exactly what you're doing right now because you have to do that') and moves on without asking what it costs."
Should have said"Pause and ask an impact question: 'When a change doesn't make it to the field today, what does that cost you on event day, how often does a setup get missed or reworked, and how much team time goes into re-walking events and chasing changes by text each week?' That turns the pain into a measurable business outcome the buyer owns."
Next step to progress: Book a working session with Bronwyn plus the ops and private-events leads (Sable, Ewan) to quantify the Impact (cost of changes not reaching the field, rework hours, missed setups, event-day risk) and convert the late-Aug to early-Sept Kestrel-season go-live into a confirmed decision and contract date.
Impact (2/5), neither rep asked a single impact question across two demos. Buyers voiced real operational pain (field staff ignore the system, changes go out by ad-hoc text, the current floor-plan tool forces re-walking events) but no one ever converted it into a measurable business consequence (rework hours, missed setups, event-day risk, labor cost), so value has no number to anchor to at the stage where Impact should be established.
Simone KeatingSimone Keating runs a strong front half of SPICED (Situation 3.6) but stalls on Impact and Critical Event. Coaching Impact first will move the most deals.
Bayou City FC (Aurora Energy Stadium, Northwind Summit)Stalled
Deal risk, high: Expansion is stalled and dormant over four months with no Critical Event, unquantified Impact, single-threaded engagement, and an explicit buyer 'future state' deferral, so nothing is pulling it forward.
Customer said"Yeah, I think as we grow and we start assigning tasks or jobs, that could be a function we'd use for sure. I think right now we're getting everybody, really company wide, used to the new look"
Simone Keating said"so it sounds like venuedesk might be more of a future state thing once you guys get more entrenched in the system and see whether that's a need for you guys, but just wanted to put it in front of you to see if it was something you guys wanted to roll out now versus later. But any other questions for me at all?"
Should have said"That makes sense, you're still settling in the core system. Help me understand the calendar: when does your operations ramp peak this season, and is there a point, a season opener, a staffing-up date, a budget cycle, where lacking shared, mobile job assignments actually costs you on a game day? I'd like to tie the VenueDesk decision to a date that matters to your operation, rather than leaving it as someday."
Next step to progress: Re-open the VenueDesk expansion with a value-and-trigger call: quantify the cost of verbal-only, unshared game-day coordination (hours event services spends re-collecting and re-pushing info, risk of a missed handoff), then back the decision into a real operational date such as the season opener or staffing-up ramp to create a Critical Event, and close on a dated, mutual next step rather than another open-ended demo.
Critical Event is absent (1.0) and is the most coachable gap. On the only sales-cycle call the buyer deferred VenueDesk to an undated 'future state' with zero consequence for waiting, and Simone accepted the deferral and pivoted to 'any other questions' instead of surfacing or co-creating a dated, consequential trigger (season ramp, staffing milestone, game-day failure cost). With no Critical Event, the expansion has no reason to move and sits in polite limbo.
Other deals (11), click to inspect
PGX Entertainment Group (Rasmus Center, Birch Bay)Pricing / Negotiation
PGX Entertainment Group (Rasmus Center, Birch Bay)Pricing / Negotiation
Deal risk, high: Dormant 75 days past a 5/31 budget deadline on a committed this-week proposal, Impact never quantified at a late pricing stage, and explicit buyer fear of runaway cost plus open conversion threat make this a margin and slippage risk.
Customer said"we're at that four or five mark total annually and we just, there's hardly any value there. We don't bring any money in from that, those registrations we're talking about are like youth camps for our uchl hockey team that doesn't generate a ton of revenue"
Simone Keating said"And I know it's only 6,500 which still doesn't get me very far. But that could be, you know, another way to save a bit of money. (rep pivots straight to price, never quantifies the problem)"
Should have said"Help me put a number on that. What does each of those five registration events actually bring in, and what does running them on our system cost you in staff hours today? If registration nets you, say, a few thousand a year on $20,000 of cost, that's the number we both need in front of your CFO, and it shows us exactly which modules are worth keeping versus replacing."
Next step to progress: Send the committed revised proposal at the agreed high-80s price flat for three years, line-item priced with room diagramming and DocuSign removed, and tie it to a quantified Impact number on the money-losing low-utilization registration workflow so the renewal is defended on value-per-dollar in front of CFO Elodie before the 5/31 budget deadline.
Impact is weak (2.0): pain surfaced but no measurable business impact, and the rep never asked an impact question. Across four calls the buyer named real business-flavored pain (a money-losing, low-utilization registration workflow, 60 percent system utilization, fear of runaway cost), but no one ever quantified what any of it costs PGX, and the rep never asked a single impact question (what would solving this mean to your business, what does this cost you, what happens if you do not change). Every value signal was treated as a discount cue, leaving the negotiation anchored on price where the rep can only lose margin.
City of Ironvale AL (Northwind renewal)Recommendation / Proposal
City of Ironvale AL (Northwind renewal)Recommendation / Proposal
Deal risk, medium: Proposal is out but Impact is unquantified at pricing stage, Critical Event is seller-manufactured, and engagement is cooling (Call 4 collapsed to two attendees and rescheduled, latest call 26 days ago with no buyer-owned next step)
Customer said"if we can skip posting interest by hand and just run straight from activity to GL, then that works great for us. On the reconciliation side. I'd just want more detail on that"
Simone Keating said"Totally a fair concern. And honestly, past that one pager on the open API, I don't really know how it works on the back end to connect all the things together."
Should have said"That manual posting and reconciliation is exactly where the API pays for itself. Help me size it: how many hours a month does your team spend posting transactions to the GL by hand today, and how often do reconciliation errors send someone back to fix it? If that is, say, X hours a month across the team, that is the number we put against this so the renewal reads as a clear return rather than a line item."
Next step to progress: Hold a working session with Damian Osgood and a solutions engineer to quantify the manual GL-posting and reconciliation pain (hours per month, error/rework cost), tie that number to the open-API integration, and lock a dated decision and order-form date before the Aug 31 renewal, converting the seller-set deadline into buyer-owned urgency
Impact never gets past pain. Real operational pain surfaced (manual GL posting and reconciliation, pending-user lockouts, venue underutilization), but no buyer ever articulated a measurable business consequence, and the rep never asked an impact question on any of the four calls. The only figures present (current $100K contract, 5% uplift, 22 seats, discounts) are spend size or solution price, never the cost of a problem. Under the refined definition this is band 2 (pain only), not Impact: the finance director handed Simone a live, sizable pain in Call 3 and she deflected to not knowing the back end rather than asking what solving it would mean to the business.
HSCVA (Hartwell-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority)Stalled
HSCVA (Hartwell-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority)Stalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled 58 days after a pricing call with no close, no buyer-owned Critical Event, single-threaded with unquantified Impact, and now contingent on an unrelated venue deal with explicit price pushback ('we wouldn't be able to do 12,000').
Customer said"I think it could be handy for our operation team... I think it would be really handy for our Av team to confirm they actually got all their equipment back after a room because I mean tables and chairs are kind of harder to disappear than like a mouse or like a power strip."
Simone Keating said"Fintan endorsed the value ('that's super helpful') but neither he nor Simone asked what lost AV equipment actually costs the venue, so the pain remained qualitative."
Should have said"That's a real one. Roughly how often does AV gear like a mic, a power strip, or a laptop disappear after a show, and what does replacing it cost you over a year? If we put a number on what walks out the door, that's the figure we weigh against the subscription, rather than a feeling that it'd be handy."
Next step to progress: Re-anchor and re-open directly with Cormac (the near-yes ops buyer) for the July 1 fiscal-year start, leading with a quantified cost-of-problem number (annual lost-AV-equipment replacement cost plus run-of-show reprint hours) so the $10,000 price is weighed against recovered value, and lock a specific signature date instead of leaving it gated on the Brendan deal.
Impact (2.0, pain only): the buyer surfaced real, ownable pains (lost AV equipment after a show, manual run-of-show printing, a copy-paste formatting bug, 60-page event orders that are hard to navigate), but no one ever pushed past the pain into a measurable BUSINESS outcome, and the rep never once asked an impact question across all four calls. Every figure in the deal is either business-size (60-page event orders, 55,000 bowlers, 150,000 room nights) or solution-price ($15K subscription, $10,000$10,000), never the cost of the problem. So when the deal stalled on price ('the price is pretty heavy, I don't know if our team would go for 12,000'), there was no business value to weigh against it.
Ridgeline Energy DistrictStalled
Ridgeline Energy DistrictStalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled 82 days post-demo with no close, single-threaded discovery, no Critical Event, Impact unquantified at a late stage, and an unresolved CFO budget objection, with timeline already slipped from March to April to summer.
Customer said"TBD, it'll have to, I know it'll have to hold until we do our like actual core group meeting which I've got scheduled for next week. Yeah, if not March because I don't see us doing anything at least on the arena side... if not before March, then probably past March. So April."
Simone Keating said"are we still trying to move quickly here to try to get something signed before March? Because busy season starts in March, right?"
Should have said"Help me understand what March really means for you operationally. If the GLX women's tournament first week of March and busy season arrive without venue desk and the services hours in place, what exactly breaks or costs you, and who feels it? If nothing breaks, then April or summer is honestly fine and we should plan to that. If something does break, let's work backward from that date to a signature target your core group can commit to."
Next step to progress: Re-engage the core group and anchor a buyer-owned Critical Event tied to the arena renovation summer window, then quantify Thaddeus and Peregrine's insane hours into a CFO-grade cost-of-inaction so Rosemary can weigh the Premier increase against a real number, and book a dated decision meeting from there.
Critical Event (1.5) is the lowest dimension and the primary coachable gap: no buyer-owned dated event with a real consequence forces the decision. The only urgency is seller-introduced ('before March, busy season') and seller-manufactured (sign-this-quarter discount). The buyer repeatedly de-prioritizes and pushes timing out ('TBD... likely past March. So April', 'More like summer' due to renovation). Compounding it, Impact stays at band 2: the buyer surfaced real personal pain (Thaddeus's 'insane' hours, 'six softwares... crazy to me', manual re-keying) but never named a measurable business outcome, and neither rep ever asked an impact question, so there is no quantified cost-of-inaction to anchor a CE, which is exactly why the deal slips and stalls on price at the demo.
Dominion College of Physicians and SurgeonsExpansion
Dominion College of Physicians and SurgeonsExpansion
Deal risk, high: Expansion is commercially stalled: single-threaded on a non-budget-owner (Ondine), no Critical Event and unquantified Impact, the buyer openly defers urgency and floats a build-in-house alternative, and the motion has dropped to generic status calls with no proposal, pricing, or dated next step
Customer said"knowing that like it expires in may, I would say we need to start like in September looking at all of this because like the internal approvals and any back and forth, it just, it felt like it took forever for the internal team to just like say, yes"
Simone Keating said"I'm always pro like leaving giving legal enough room to do their legal thing."
Should have said"So if internal approval dragged that long last time and the contract expires in May, working backward means a signed decision has to land by [date] or you risk lapsing into a renewal on old packaging and losing the creative discount window. Is that the deadline we're genuinely working to, and what specifically breaks for the aurelia travel project if the fall events show up before this is solved?"
Next step to progress: Re-anchor the expansion with the economic buyer present (loop in the budget owner and the Aurelia Travel requirements owner), quantify the manual three-report burden into a weekly hours and cost number, and tie it to a working-backwards decision deadline off the May 2027 expiry plus the documented slow internal approvals, then issue the packaging analysis and a priced add-on proposal with a dated mutual next step
Critical Event (1.5), no dated-event-with-consequence exists three calls in; the buyer actively removes urgency ('we have time on this project, I'm not overly concerned'). The May 2027 expiry and the documented slow internal approvals are raw material the rep never converted into a forcing function.
Renquist WorldwidePricing / Negotiation
Renquist WorldwidePricing / Negotiation
Deal risk, high: 65 days dormant with no close, no buyer Critical Event, Impact unquantified at a late pricing stage, and finance (Philippa) raised price scrutiny that went unconverted, so the order form can stall or shrink.
Customer said"Well, we already paid through August or July I think... So, would you adjust like would we get refunded for the part we already paid? And then we'd just like start at the 100 K, is that what it is?"
Simone Keating said"Yeah. So I'd prorate it for, until the next term starts? ... Let me come back to you on that. I can propose new numbers."
Should have said"That July renewal is actually a natural decision point for us to anchor to. If we get the new package and the exhibitor-portal rollout live before your next term begins in July, you avoid paying twice and your team of six stops bleeding time across all 60 events this season. Can we agree that July renewal is the date we work back from, and map out the steps and approvals we both need to hit it?"
Next step to progress: Re-engage Merrick and Philippa on a live call to anchor the deal to the July renewal as a buyer Critical Event, working back from that date, and in the same call quantify the cost of the 6-person, 60-event registration drain in hours and dollars so the 100K price is defensible to finance, then book a dated mutual decision step before the order form expires.
Critical Event (1.3, absent): the deal is at final order-form approval with no dated buyer-owned event forcing a decision. Simone substitutes seller-manufactured urgency (new-packaging push, time-limited discounts) for a real buyer Critical Event, and let the one natural anchor, the July/August renewal, drop to a proration mechanics question.
Lattimore ArtsPricing / Negotiation
Lattimore ArtsPricing / Negotiation
Deal risk, high: Late-stage renewal contested on price by the signer who surfaced late and adversarial, unquantified Impact, no champion, named alternative (vennly/look elsewhere), and a hard July renewal with Aug 1 payment due
Customer said"So there's a massive gap between... those rentals in terms of like the process and also the efficiency of it... it's sort of an old school way of doing settlements."
Simone Keating said"Yeah, absolutely. ... Yeah, I think looking at northwind payments would definitely move you guys a good step forward toward achieving that."
Should have said"Ivo just handed you the door: a 'huge gap' in process and efficiency on rental settlements run in a wonky Excel sheet. Instead of jumping to a product (Northwind payments), ask the impact question: 'When you run a rental settlement the old-school way, how long does that take per event, and how many do you do a month? If we closed that gap, what would that time or those errors be worth to the team?' That turns personal annoyance ('wonky,' 'old school') into a measurable business outcome (hours saved per settlement x volume), which you can then carry into the renewal as quantified value, exactly the anchor Simone lacked when Ignatius contested the 25% increase in Call 3."
Next step to progress: Go back to Ignatius within 60 hours with a value-anchored counter, not just a deeper discount: quantify the Impact of the manual Excel settlement gap (hours per settlement times volume, formula-error rework) and the vennly integration Corwin needs via the Link API, then reframe the Pro modules as cost and time removed elsewhere so the increase reads net-neutral, and propose a dated mutual close plan tied to the July renewal and the Aug 1 payment due date
Impact (2/weak): across all three calls the rep never asked a single impact question. Genuine operational pain (wonky Excel settlements, untrained staff, manual rework) was surfaced in Call 1 but never quantified into a measurable business consequence, so the deal entered a 25% price negotiation with zero quantified value to anchor against, collapsing into pure discount-begging.
Baywood Schools (Baywood ISD, Norlake)Pricing / Negotiation
Baywood Schools (Baywood ISD, Norlake)Pricing / Negotiation
Deal risk, high: About 57 days dormant since the last call with the hard July 1 order-form deadline now roughly a week away, no finalized price or signed order form, and unquantified Impact at a pricing stage.
Customer said"there's been some talk of like switching systems and I recognize and the event management recognize the power of the system and that there really isn't anything out there that kind of... there's pieces of it. We could cobble it together but the system is from what we need here, it does what we need it to do. And so I'm not, it's not a threat in any way."
Simone Keating said"Simone did not engage with the alternative at all; she let it go by and the conversation shifted to fiscal-cycle/board-date logistics."
Should have said"The buyer just named the no-action/substitute option (stitching together point solutions) and the criteria behind why it loses (it does what we need, nothing else covers it whole). A strong rep probes: 'When you say it does what you need, what are the two or three things it has to keep doing that a cobbled-together stack couldn't? And of those, which one matters most to the board when they see the number?' That surfaces and weights criteria through conversation and lets her push price down the list by tying it to the cost/risk of switching."
Next step to progress: Send the finalized renewal order form now with a dated mutual close plan that anchors the number to switching-cost value and the named criteria, since the July 1 signature deadline is roughly a week out after about 57 days of silence and Impact remains unquantified.
Decision Criteria (2.5, weak): the buyer named his own criteria AND his own no-action alternative (cobble together point solutions); Simone never elicited, ranked, or tied any criterion to business impact, so criteria are buyer-volunteered rather than rep-established and the substitute path was left unexplored.
TRU PlacePost-sale / Active
TRU PlacePost-sale / Active
Deal risk, medium: Account is warm and recent (10 days since last call), but the only commercial motion, the Premier and API upsell, is deferred to a future budget cycle with no quantified Impact and no dated Critical Event, and executive sponsor Loreley is leaving within a month.
Customer said"really the reporting side is the piece we're really trying to tap into. Now, we have three years' worth of data and we want to really use that to help us make better business decisions."
Simone Keating said"Yeah, absolutely. That totally makes sense. Have you guys seen just kind of on the topic of using northwind a little better and quicker? Have you guys seen the webinars coming up this week?"
Should have said"That's the gold mine. When you say better business decisions from the margin data, which decision can you NOT make today that's costing you? If you could see department and event margins cleanly, what would that be worth to the business this year, in dollars or in events you'd run differently?"
Next step to progress: At the already-scheduled July 21 meeting, ask an impact question that sizes the margin and reporting priority in dollars or decisions, then date the PrairieTel merger as a forcing event and frame the Premier plus API upgrade as what makes that merger succeed, converting the deferred upsell into an active dated opportunity while confirming Loreley's successor as executive sponsor.
Impact (2.3): two calls deep, no measurable business Impact has been established and neither rep ever asked an impact question. Buyers handed over a live business priority (turn three years of data into margin/P&L decisions) and named real pain, but pain was never converted into a quantified consequence; instead the rep concluded 'I'm not hearing a lot of pain' and pitched packaging on top of an unestablished need. This is the root gap that starves Decision Criteria and Decision Process downstream.
U.S. Maritime AcademyStalled
U.S. Maritime AcademyStalled
Deal risk, high: Dormant 102 days at the pricing/order-form stage with no quote delivered, single-threaded on one champion, no buyer-owned Critical Event, and unquantified Impact, so it can die quietly in government legal review.
Customer said"So, I need to get my head around the difference between kind of keeping our legacy order, what we'd have and the pricing, versus moving to a new bundle and making sure there's no disruption service... And really, you know, the cost benefit type of information."
Simone Keating said"Absolutely. So what would be helpful for me is getting more feedback on what you're seeing right now. Is this everything you would need? Is there anything else you've had your eye on that you'd want? Like now is the time to get create like I can get creative with discounting upon your renewal?"
Should have said"The buyer just named cost-benefit as her decision criterion. The rep should have turned that into an impact question: 'When you say cost-benefit, which outcome matters most? The last renewal ran four months and a lot of phone calls with legal. What does that process cost your team in time each year, and what would simplifying it plus locking in SSO be worth to your operation?' That shifts it from cost-benefit-as-info-request into a measurable business outcome (staff hours on the legal lift, avoided disruption) tied to the renewal decision."
Next step to progress: Re-engage champion Marguerite Vossberg directly and deliver the promised no-obligation quote with one, two, and three year option-year pricing and the waived SSO implementation fee, and in that same touch anchor a dated Critical Event to the actual contract expiry and quantify Impact by asking what last year's four-month legal renewal cost her team in staff hours and what another year without SSO exposes, so the economics carry urgency through government legal review.
Impact (2/10): the rep never asked an impact question across either call. The buyer explicitly named her decision lens ('cost benefit type of information') and gestured at real operational pain (last year's 4-month legal renewal), and the rep answered with discounting talk instead of quantifying a business outcome. The deal has advanced to a quote with zero measurable business value established.
Museum of the CodexExpansion
Museum of the CodexExpansion
Deal risk, medium: Warm and active with a real September registration Critical Event, but the seller-set May 1 signature target slipped roughly eight weeks with no close and Impact is still unquantified (2.0) heading into the SOW, so value and timeline are not anchored.
Customer said"I think Eventra has been… it's been a solid tool but it was a Macgyver tool for us to get speed and control inside a small group of people that got onboarded four or five years ago six years ago before most of us existed... And so now we're like integrated across teams."
Simone Keating said"Yeah. And they can still take part in like your discovery sessions and things like that. Like I'd encourage, you know, at least one or two people who do have the current knowledge and like practical grasp of how you guys use the system."
Should have said"That's exactly the shift I want to understand. When the events and fundraising teams double-work one event across Eventra and Northwind today, what is that costing you, in staff hours per event or in events you have to turn down? And if everything sat in one system before your September registration opens, what would that let the fundraising team do that they can't do now? I want the business case for consolidating to be as clear as the module list."
Next step to progress: Book a value-and-close working session with Alaric and Verity to quantify what double-working events across Eventra and Northwind costs in staff hours and events they cannot take on, then deliver the SOW anchored to that business case with a reset signature date tied to the September registration deadline.
Impact (2.0): no rep asked an Impact question on either call. The Museum of the Codex expansion is being scoped and pushed to a May 1 signature on onboarding logistics, module packaging, and SOW pricing alone, with zero quantified value of consolidating off Eventra and no cost-of-inaction, even though the buyer handed over the perfect opening (Eventra is a "Macgyver tool" now straining across integrated teams).
Bianca Feld
Ronan WhitfieldRonan Whitfield runs a strong front half of SPICED (Situation 3.8) but stalls on Critical Event and Impact. Coaching Critical Event first will move the most deals.
Redrock Center (Sterling County Convention Center)Stalled
Deal risk, high: 137 days dormant after a priced proposal with no close, no real Critical Event, unquantified Impact, and single-threaded around Osric, so the seller-manufactured February urgency that drove it has collapsed.
Customer said"We want to make sure it covers what we need there."
Ronan Whitfield said"If your team could reach a decision within the same month we're having this conversation, we can offer a significant incentive in exchange for you guys moving faster on that decision."
Should have said"Rather than manufacturing a discount deadline, ask the buyer what is really driving their timing: 'When does your contract with Atrium Reserve renew, and is there a date you need to be live by? You run about 160 revenue events a year, so is there an exhibitor or event season you'd want this in place ahead of?' That surfaces a buyer-owned dated event with a real consequence the deal can anchor to."
Next step to progress: Re-engage Osric with a value reframe and surface a buyer-owned Critical Event to anchor a decision date: ask when the Atrium Reserve contract renews and whether there is an event or exhibitor season they must be live for, then tie a revived quote to that date rather than to an expired discount.
Critical Event (score 1, absent): the only time pressure in the entire sequence is the rep's own February discount window, which is seller-manufactured urgency, not a buyer-owned dated event with a real consequence. No incumbent-contract renewal, fiscal/budget close, or event-season go-live was ever surfaced, so the deal has momentum but nothing forcing a decision date once the discount loses its pull.
Other deals (18), click to inspect
University of CoralviewPricing / Negotiation
University of CoralviewPricing / Negotiation
Deal risk, high: Active contact (6 days since last call) but stuck past pricing for months with no Critical Event, unquantified Impact, undefined budget, an explicit buyer-set slow-burn pace, and the economic buyer Baris never engaged, so it can stall indefinitely at the number.
Customer said"it'll be like a slow burn getting everyone off venuetrack eventually would be the goal"
Ronan Whitfield said"Love it. ... it's a journey. Me and gideon have been at this so long. We never think like, oh, this is happening in two weeks. It's like, yeah, I mean, two to two months to two years we'll get there. Hopefully, we understand... we are patient."
Should have said"Totally fair to phase it. So I can help you protect that plan, what's the date that genuinely forces a first decision? For instance, when does your VenueTrack contract renew, and is there a renewal fee or auto-renewal we'd want to get ahead of? And Casimir mentioned Baris wants SSO, is there a date that mandate has to be met by? If we tie phase one to a genuine deadline such as a VenueTrack renewal or the SSO requirement, we can work backward and make sure budget approval arrives in time."
Next step to progress: Book a working session with the economic buyer Baris plus Lysander to anchor phase one to a real Critical Event, pulling the VenueTrack contract renewal or exit date and the SSO mandate deadline forward, and pair that date with a quantified cost-of-inaction so the $60-70k number has a value anchor and a forcing event behind it.
Critical Event is absent (1.3). At proposal/pricing stage the buyer has explicitly set an open-ended 'slow burn' pace and the rep amplified it ('two months to two years, we are patient'). No dated external consequence exists to pull the deal to a close, despite two latent CE candidates handed over: the VenueTrack contract Lysander is already asking IT purchasing about, and the SSO mandate from 'Baris'. Neither was converted into a date-plus-consequence.
Millbrook Convention CenterStalled
Millbrook Convention CenterStalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled 75 days past an April 1 close target with no signature, single-threaded on Isolde, and unquantified Impact leaving the verbal commitment under-anchored if procurement or a competitor reopens it.
Customer said"We do have our, like with Auberon and we use the older version of a floorgrid for our floor plans. We do, once we print and sort of finalize and hand out, the event outlines, they'll have the floor plans included. We scan and attach that into convergent, so we've got tracking for it in the file per SE. But for the most part, we make it work with just the, scan into, and add as an attachment feature. ... We do a lot of scanning around here and attaching."
Ronan Whitfield said"Okay. But it would be great if we could just, you know? ... Right, right. ... It sure is. Yeah."
Should have said"That scan-and-attach step on every event order, walk me through it. About how many minutes does it take per event, and across the 90 to 99 events a year you run, how many hours is your team burning just scanning and re-attaching floor plans across Auberon, FloorGrid, and Convergent? And when one gets missed or mis-filed, what does that cost you in rework or a booking error? I want a real number on what this manual workflow costs you each year, because that is the number that justifies the change."
Next step to progress: Re-engage Isolde directly to confirm whether PFMA approved and the order form is signed, and if it stalled, quantify the Impact, hours per year scanning and re-attaching floor plans across 90 to 99 events plus the cost of staying on expiring software, to re-anchor urgency and drive to signature before budget-year money lapses.
Decision Criteria (2.3, weak, gap) is now the deal's lowest dimension. Criteria surfaced only because the buyer volunteered requirements while reacting to the demo (board-approved contract format, grid calendar, integrated floor plans, no ACH/city payment constraint, separated sales-vs-coordinator permissions, commission tracking); Ronan never ran a criteria-and-priority conversation, never surfaced the no-action/status-quo option, never ranked the incumbent criterion-by-criterion, and never re-prioritized any criterion by tying it to a business outcome. Impact remains weak (2.0): real buyer-named process pain (manual scan-and-attach across three tools, a commissions gap, an aging platform) was surfaced, but the rep never asked a single impact question and no measurable business outcome was ever articulated, so it stayed pain, not Impact.
Events By Ten (La Brasa / Almavia venue)Stalled
Events By Ten (La Brasa / Almavia venue)Stalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled deal, 117 days dormant with no close after two pricing calls, single-threaded to one champion, no Critical Event, and Impact never quantified at a late stage.
Customer said"Otherwise we're doing it all in excel, which is what I call excel. Hell."
Ronan Whitfield said"So that's not what you want? No?"
Should have said"Excel hell, tell me what that's really costing you. With ~10 people and 16-20 events a year, how many hours a week does your team lose to manual tracking, and have you ever had a double-booking or a missed invoice that cost you real money? Put a number on it and we'll know exactly what fixing this is worth."
Next step to progress: Re-engage Tamsin with a value-anchored re-open that quantifies the Impact gap and forces a decision: send a short proposal that ties the ~$20K/year package to her own 'Excel hell' cost (hours lost across 10 staff and 16-20 events a year, double-booking and missed-invoice risk), and request a 30-minute working session that brings the unnamed end client (the contract-addressed economic buyer) to the table to confirm budget, criteria, and the June venue-open date as the forcing event.
Impact (2.0, Pain only): the buyer surfaced real but emotional, personal pain ('Excel hell,' the task-tool 'PTSD') and never articulated a measurable business outcome, and the rep never asked an impact question. Under the refined definition this is Pain, not Impact: the rep did not push past the annoyance into a business consequence (hours saved, cost avoided, more events booked, fewer double-bookings or missed invoices). Every number in the deal is business size (~10 staff, 16-20 events/year, 3 spaces) or solution price (~$20K/year, ~$6K setup, 3.5%/0.5% fees), none of which is the cost of the problem. Impact sits a full point below Meets because no diagnostic impact question ('what would solving this mean to your business,' 'what happens if you do not change') was ever asked.
Cedar Grove Performing Arts Center (Cedar Grove Recreation & Park District)Pricing / Negotiation
Cedar Grove Performing Arts Center (Cedar Grove Recreation & Park District)Pricing / Negotiation
Deal risk, high: Stalled on price with no buyer-owned Critical Event, single-threaded through Rosemary against an arms-length board that controls the budget, Impact never quantified at the proposal stage, and explicit affordability pushback now sitting 24 days cold with the latest call type drifting to other.
Customer said"I'm like it might be a bit higher than maybe what I was expecting or what we can swing right now"
Ronan Whitfield said"if we could sort of, you know, lock arms and get moving in quarter one, that's the exciting part"
Should have said"Help me understand the timing on your side. The performing arts center opened in October and you said programming is trending toward an event a week with the amphitheater opening and 500 seats coming online, plus you're about to hire the operations and rental coordinator. Is there a point by which not having this in place genuinely costs you, a season spent running on spreadsheets, or onboarding that new hire into the old mess? If we anchor to that real date, I can shape the proposal and the rollout around it instead of around our quarter."
Next step to progress: Re-open the price conversation by anchoring the ~$30k against a quantified cost-of-problem and a buyer-owned Critical Event: book a working session with Rosemary plus the finance manager and a board-budget owner, tie the rollout to the amphitheater 500-seat season opening and the incoming operations and rental coordinator hire, and reshape the proposal and payment terms around that real date rather than the seller quarter-end discount.
Critical Event is absent (1.5): no buyer-surfaced dated event with a consequence exists across all three calls. The only urgency is the rep's quarter-end discount, which is seller-manufactured, not a Critical Event. Real buyer-owned triggers were sitting in the transcript (amphitheater 500-seat season opening, the impending operations/rental coordinator hire) and were never converted into a co-created decision date. By the proposal stage this leaves the timeline with no buyer reason to decide, which is what lets the affordability stall detonate in Call 3. On the refined definition Impact now Meets (3.0): the rep did ask an impact question and Rosemary named measurable-in-principle outcomes (time saved to train a new coordinator, faster per-event P&L reporting the board wants), though none was quantified, so Critical Event is now the deal's lowest dimension.
Pacifica Condors (Northwind deal)Stalled
Pacifica Condors (Northwind deal)Stalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled 66 days after proposal with no close, single-threaded through one champion, no Critical Event, and unquantified Impact at a late pricing stage.
Customer said"there is no dirty 60 90 for us. They just want to be sure the platform gives them everything they want. Once they find the platform that gives them everything that they want... I'd imagine we'd probably purchase it in around 35 days, 70 days."
Ronan Whitfield said"Yeah, that's perfect. So like, yeah, 30 70 days. Yeah, that works great. That's great. Okay."
Should have said"That helps. So timing comes down to fit rather than a deadline. Is there a specific event or date the facility has to be running this on, an offseason concert series, a partner event, the building's first booked event, where if it isn't live by then, it actually hurts? Working backwards from that date, what is the latest you'd need to sign to be live in time?"
Next step to progress: Re-engage champion Boomer to co-create a real Critical Event, anchor the purchase to a specific dated facility event (first booked offseason concert or partner activation) and work backward to a sign-by date, while quantifying the cost of staying on Jira (admin hours per event, onboarding time, missed-task risk) so the price gets a value anchor the events deciders can act on.
Critical Event (1.4, absent): no buyer forcing function exists. The buyer explicitly killed any deadline ('there is no dirty 60 90 for us'), and the only urgency is the seller's own 60-day discount. The deal can drift indefinitely. Ronan affirmed a soft, slippable timeline instead of co-creating a real dated event the facility must run on.
Excite Brambleton SocietyRecommendation / Proposal
Excite Brambleton SocietyRecommendation / Proposal
Deal risk, medium: 45 days dormant since 2026-05-07 and now past the buyer's own June tell-EventForge decision window, with unquantified Impact heading into pricing against an anchored incumbent, though strong Pain, a real contract-exit Critical Event, and a sold champion keep it recoverable.
Customer said"And I'm spending a lot of money every year on this software. I mean, I think it's a lot of money. I don't have many reference points but I think it's a lot of money."
Ronan Whitfield said"Well, do you, so how long have you used or has the organization used eventforge? Any idea, I?"
Should have said"That's exactly the thing I want to put a number on with you. Two numbers really: what are you paying EventForge per year today, and separately, what is the broken process costing you? Your sales team is keeping leads in three separate spreadsheets and duplicating data. If even one or two opportunities a year slip through those cracks at, say, a $10,000 to $20,000 event, that dwarfs the license fee. Can we ballpark how many leads or events fall through today, and roughly how many hours a week your team loses re-entering data across those three places?"
Next step to progress: Re-engage Elke Ransome now with a tight proposal that leads with a cost-of-inaction anchor (annual EventForge spend, hours per week lost to triple-entry across the sales team, revenue leakage from missed or duplicated leads) tied to her own June tell-EventForge deadline and August contract exit, and book a decision meeting with her plus the operations and sales managers to close the Impact gap before price becomes the only conversation.
Impact never moves past pain (score 2). The buyer surfaced strong, vivid, self-owned Pain (slow software, triple-entry across three spreadsheets, can't self-serve reports, weekend outages on the busiest day) but never articulated a measurable business outcome, and the rep never asked an impact question. At the clearest opening ('I'm paying a lot of money every year... I think it's a lot of money') Ronan pivoted to vendor tenure rather than asking what solving this would mean to the business or what inaction costs. Per the refined definition this is surfaced pain, not Impact. Heading into the proposal on the 23rd, the deal competes on price alone against an incumbent the buyer is already anchored to, with no cost-of-inaction anchor.
University of Marchand / Halewood HouseDemo / Evaluation
University of Marchand / Halewood HouseDemo / Evaluation
Deal risk, high: Highest-priced of four vendors with explicit price pushback, no quantified Impact, no genuine Critical Event, no confirmed champion, and the only engaged contact no-showed her own escalation demo as the June 30 target nears.
Customer said"I know we've been pushing for June first, but looking at it all, we've been so delayed with the demos... things keep slipping but, you know, this is very normal for universities like because there are different years of approvals required for everything we go through."
Ronan Whitfield said"I understand. Well, I think with that in mind, I'm going to go ahead and before I send this over, I'm going to ask my boss to just extend the pricing out to June thirtieth."
Should have said"That makes sense. Help me understand what is actually forcing a decision by any date. Is there a budget cycle or fiscal year-end you have to commit funds within? When does the current VenueTrack contract renew or auto-renew, and is there a notice period? Is the space renovation tied to a date you need the new system live for? I want our timeline anchored to a real deadline your team owns, rather than to a discount I set."
Next step to progress: Run a value-and-decision working session with Theo Ferndale (the boss) and Solene (key user) to quantify the cost of lost and missed business that the buyer already raised, convert that into a recovered-revenue case that justifies being the highest-priced vendor, and pin a real Critical Event by surfacing the incumbent VenueTrack renewal or notice date and the fiscal budget cycle, replacing the self-set discount deadline.
Critical Event (1.5): no genuine forcing function exists. Every date is either the buyer's own sliding procurement timeline or seller-manufactured discount urgency the rep created and then voluntarily relaxed (25% off 'by end of May' extended to June 30). The deal has no external dated event with a consequence the buyer owns.
Ridgemont Soccer ClubStalled
Ridgemont Soccer ClubStalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled roughly 166 days after a proposal with no close, single-threaded through a self-described non-decider, no Critical Event, and Impact never quantified at a late stage.
Customer said"It's really about four, four there's four, I guess technical leaders over me. And then... we're obviously a nonprofit. So there's a board of directors who signs off on the budget... I'm meeting with them next week. And then from there... if they decide to go ahead, then it goes to the board of directors and then they vote on it."
Ronan Whitfield said"Well that's great. Well, hey, look, I like one layer of three like it's making things get done easier."
Should have said"That board vote is your opening to anchor a real Critical Event. Ask: 'When does the board convene and vote, and what season or start date are you aiming to be live for? If you have to be operational by the spring jumpstart, onboarding takes 10 to 15 weeks, so we'd need signature by roughly X to make it. Does that fit the board's vote date?' That turns a fuzzy January-February cue into a dated event with a real consequence (missing the season) and a back-calculated sign-by date the buyer owns."
Next step to progress: Re-engage Ferris with a dated re-anchor that builds the missing Critical Event: tie the spring season jumpstart and the board vote to the 10-to-12-week onboarding runway, back-calculate a sign-by date, and request a working session with the four technical leaders or the ex-ITG director so the proposal is no longer carried secondhand by a non-decider.
Critical Event (1.5), no dated event with a forcing consequence exists. The deal has a directional January-February buyer cue and a defined approval body (four technical leaders plus a nonprofit board vote), but the only urgency is seller-manufactured (the January discount). The board vote and a season/go-live date were never bound to the 10-12 week implementation runway to create a real sign-by date the buyer owns.
Lakemont EventsStalled
Lakemont EventsStalled
Deal risk, high: Dormant over 130 days since the last demo, Call 2 closed with no dated mutual next step, and there is no quantified Impact, no Critical Event, and no mapped decision process, so warmth has not converted to momentum.
Customer said"We don't really use any booking software. We use a shared Google calendar for the arena and theater, yeah, which beats the old three ring binder we used to use... The efficiency should be gained there as well?"
Ronan Whitfield said"Baby steps that's great. Fintan. Any questions on your end? Especially thinking about the multi venue?"
Should have said"That's a big tell. If you're running a 7,000-seat arena plus a convention center off one shared Google calendar, what does that cost you today, double-bookings, hours your team burns reconciling, deals you can't quote quickly enough? If we handed back, say, a few hours a week per coordinator and dropped booking conflicts to zero, what would that be worth to Lakemont Events this year?"
Next step to progress: Re-engage Elodie (the champion) to book the deferred team demo and a working session that quantifies Impact, converting her own efficiency and budgeting openings into hours lost and double-bookings priced in dollars, then anchor a Critical Event to Lakemont's May to October amphitheater season and the eight great Tuesdays by backing the 12 to 18 week implementation lead time into a decision date and surfacing the budget owner and approval path.
Impact (1.5): across both demos the rep never asked a true impact question. The buyer handed an explicit efficiency opening ('the efficiency should be gained there as well?') and a budgeting use case, but no measurable business outcome (time, cost, revenue, CSAT) was ever quantified, so there is no business case to justify a 12-18 week implementation and switching cost.
Meridian Health Training Center (Gulfshore Mariners practice facility)Stalled
Meridian Health Training Center (Gulfshore Mariners practice facility)Stalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled roughly 3 months with no updates, single-threaded through a no-authority coordinator, Impact never quantified, and the April budget window the deal depended on has already lapsed.
Customer said"There's a lot of different outlets and things can slip through especially if there's a comment one day and it gets buried in my email and I don't get to it... You could have had an event approved on Monday, but I don't send the calendar out until Friday and other things could get added in. So some of these corporate partnerships leads will run into issues planning events with our corporate partnerships and then having dates overlap."
Ronan Whitfield said"Ronan acknowledged the problem and moved into scoping clients and event volume ('I want to ask a clarifying question... who are her clients?'), then slid into the demo. He never quantified the cost or business consequence of the lost comms and overlaps."
Should have said"That overlap on corporate-partnership events sounds costly. When two events double-book or a corporate partner's date gets stepped on, what does that actually cost you, do you have to comp something, move it, or risk the partnership? And the manual reconciliation across Trello, Excel, and email, about how many hours a week does that eat across your team? If we wiped out the double-bookings and the weekly-only calendar, what would that be worth to the business this season?"
Next step to progress: Break the single-thread and re-anchor on Impact: ask Freya for a 20-minute call with her boss and the two budget approvers (and IT for SSO), and arrive with a quantified business case, hours per week lost to manual Trello/Excel/email reconciliation and the count and cost of corporate-partner double-bookings, so the economic buyer sees a number, not just a price, tied to the next budget window.
Impact (2.3): the rep never asked a single impact question across the entire sequence. He elicited vivid operational pain (double-bookings, manual reconciliation, lost comms) but never converted it into a measurable business cost or value, so the proposal went up the chain on price alone and stalled.
North Cascade State FairPricing / Negotiation
North Cascade State FairPricing / Negotiation
Deal risk, medium: Champion is sold but cannot decide, the close is gated by an unmapped board vote with no quantified business case or true Critical Event, and roughly 49 days have passed since the last call with no confirmed contracting movement.
Customer said"If we could pull it off sooner, let's say we've got a September, you know, October sounds better. October, implementation or, you know, go live date then sounds, that sounds more realistic in my head."
Ronan Whitfield said"Okay. Gotcha. So we're sort of wanting to go go live September, October, which, you know, if you kind of count three months backward, I mean, yeah, it's sort of, you need to kind of that's where you sit right now."
Should have said"So if October is the realistic go-live and we lose August to the fair, that means contracting has to be signed by roughly mid-July. Walk me through what happens to your 2027 booking season if you're still on spreadsheets and merge docs when promoters start signing 2027 contracts in September, what does that cost you in missed inventory or overbooking? Let's anchor the board ask to that date and that consequence."
Next step to progress: Get a direct working session with Torsten plus the board's decision-maker before the next board meeting to quantify the overbooking and emergency-rental cost and tie the October go-live to a dated signature deadline, converting the soft 2027 timeline into a real Critical Event that forces a decision date.
Critical Event (2.5, weak): no true dated-external-event-with-consequence anchors the close. A real buyer-originated driver exists (2027 booking season opening in September + August fair blackout implying an October go-live), but the buyer hedged it ('we have some flexibility') and the rep never converted it into a forced decision date with a cost of slipping. The May 12 board meeting is an internal approval gate, not a CE, and the May 'push through' urgency is seller-manufactured pricing pressure.
Kingsmere Community CollegeStalled
Kingsmere Community CollegeStalled
Deal risk, high: Priced deal dormant about 67 days past the proposal with no buyer-owned Critical Event, unquantified Impact at pricing stage, and single-threaded to a champion who explicitly cannot approve the budget.
Customer said"Probably depends. Honestly it depends on where, what level of cost we're talking about in terms of whether it can happen this year and the, and who has to approve it outside my department."
Ronan Whitfield said"Okay. So fiscal year starts July one. Okay?"
Should have said"If you do not have a system in place before the new fiscal year begins July 1, what breaks for your team this fall, and what specifically happens to the budget if it goes unspent in this fiscal year? And who outside your department signs off, at what dollar threshold? That turns a calendar cue into a dated event with a real consequence the buyer owns, and names the approver in the same move."
Next step to progress: Re-engage Anouk to name the budget approver and the dollar threshold that triggers their sign-off, then jointly map a dated path backward from the July 1 fiscal-year start so the proposal has a real Critical Event and a multi-threaded route to the economic buyer.
Critical Event (1.5) - no buyer-owned dated event with a consequence forcing a decision. The July fiscal-year start is a calendar cue the buyer herself made conditional, and the 20%-off 'sign within two months' is seller-manufactured urgency. At proposal/pricing stage the absence of a real Critical Event is the most likely reason this deal stalls. Impact (2.2) is the root cause feeding it: the rep never asked an impact question, so there is no quantified business consequence to anchor urgency to.
City of West HaldenPricing / Negotiation
City of West HaldenPricing / Negotiation
Deal risk, medium: Buyer is warm but single-threaded through a non-decision-maker, there is no genuine buyer-owned Critical Event, Impact is unquantified at pricing stage, and urgency rests on a manufactured June 30 discount against a buyer reality of council approval and a fall go-live.
Customer said"all of our fiscal year starts July one. So our budget request is already in. So now it's kind of like, OK, go to my director and say, you know, grand scheme of budget request 25 Ish 30 K is small compared to other, you know, large scale capital projects... is there room to?"
Ronan Whitfield said"Let's try to slip it in that's right? Let's try to slip it in at... midnight, slide the form under their desk, timing wise."
Should have said"Instead of joking about sliding the form under the desk, turn the budget cycle into a genuine, buyer-owned Critical Event: 'Walk me through it. If this doesn't land in the current fiscal-year request that's already submitted, does funding slide a full year to next July? And if it does, what's the cost of another year on a system where bleachers don't get pulled and reports go out wrong?' That connects a specific date (the budget submission window) to a concrete consequence (a lost year plus ongoing operational pain) in the buyer's own words."
Next step to progress: On the next touchpoint, convert the buyer's own fiscal-year budget cycle into a real Critical Event by asking what slipping past the current already-submitted request costs (a full year of bleacher errors and wrong reports), and use that quantified consequence, not the manufactured June 30 discount, to justify the spend; in parallel, get a multi-threaded meeting with the director, IT, and finance rather than arming Sorcha to sell alone.
Critical Event (2/weak): no genuine buyer-owned dated event with a forced consequence. The only hard date, June 30, is seller-manufactured discount urgency, not a buyer event. The buyer's real timeline (July 1 fiscal year, budget request already in, council/mayor review, fall hire) was handed to Ronan as a potential CE and he treated the budget window as a logistics joke ('slide the form under their desk') instead of quantifying the cost of slipping a full year. She hedges go-live to 'October-ish, if all the ducks align.'
Sterling County / Redrock Convention Center (St. Brendan, UT)Stalled
Sterling County / Redrock Convention Center (St. Brendan, UT)Stalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled over 100 days since the last call, a promised quote never delivered, single-threaded into a county org with absent Impact and no Critical Event to pull it forward.
Customer said"a lot of the time our contracts have to be quite, they need to be pretty malleable. They're very specific. A lot of times we have to add addendums at various points in the workflow... it's hard to change verbiage. It's hard to change pricing, it's hard to change items."
Ronan Whitfield said"Yeah. I mean, you'd be able to change that kind of thing on the fly. I mean, there's a, you know, you'd have a template. But then if you're like, hey, I need to add this new paragraph... that can all, and we can walk you through that like on a product demonstration"
Should have said"Got it, flexible contracts and addendums matter. When the other systems forced everything to be set up at the start, what did that actually cost you, delayed deals, staff hours redoing contracts, or revenue you couldn't capture? If you could change verbiage and add addendums on the fly, what would that be worth to the business?"
Next step to progress: Re-open with a value-and-date call to Osric, converting the malleable-contracts and exportable-calendar requirements into quantified business Impact (hours and delayed events the rigid system costs), anchor a fiscal-year or budget-window Critical Event, and add a second Sterling County stakeholder before sending the overdue multi-venue quote.
Impact is absent (1.3): across two discovery calls neither rep asked a single impact question, and the buyer named feature requirements (malleable contracts, exportable public calendar) but never a measurable business outcome. The deal is advancing toward pricing and a proposal with zero established business value to anchor it, which a public-sector budget approval will demand.
Bayside / Silver Mesa Athletics (B's) + Farrow DiningStalled
Bayside / Silver Mesa Athletics (B's) + Farrow DiningStalled
Deal risk, high: 107 days dormant since the pricing call with no follow-up, single-threaded through a non-user gatekeeper, no quantified Impact and no forcing Critical Event, and the buyer openly downgraded urgency to not imminent.
Customer said"And now you've got 16 meetings happening so that conversion knows when to set the tables... So it sort of turns into a spider web of conversations. And then that trickles into creating an event."
Ronan Whitfield said"Adaptable."
Should have said"That spider web is exactly what I want to quantify with you. When sales hands off and it splinters into 16 separate conversations, what does that actually cost the operation: how many hours per event does your team lose to the back-and-forth, how often do setup errors slip through, and what would one system of record mean for that? If we can put a number on it, that becomes the business case Alonso and your boss can act on."
Next step to progress: Re-engage with a multi-threaded value email to both Casimir and Alonso that quantifies the cost of the fragmented two-entity B's plus Farrow Dining operation (hours per event lost to handoffs, rework, duplication across 500 staff), then propose a working session to back-cast from the 2028 opening through summer hiring and the 10-12 week implementation to a buyer-owned sign-by date.
Impact: the rep never asked a single impact question across either call, so a vivid process pain ("spider web of conversations," duplicated effort) never became a quantified business outcome. The deal reached pricing with zero measurable consequence and the buyer openly downgraded urgency to "not imminent." This is the upstream miss that starves Critical Event and Decision Criteria of any forcing logic.
Cumberland State Athletics (Northwind deal)Stalled
Cumberland State Athletics (Northwind deal)Stalled
Deal risk, high: 69 days dormant past the 60-day threshold with no close, no Critical Event or forcing function, unquantified Impact, and the economic buyer (Athletic Director) never engaged.
Customer said"Which we were thinking we'd start with arena especially with these concerts on the way. And then wherever it goes from there is where it goes."
Ronan Whitfield said"think that's smart. That's what university of Cumberland did like especially if you're kind of like there's always group dynamics to sort out of like, well, who's going to change that calendar?"
Should have said"That's the lever. What's the first concert you're committed to, and who is already on the books with the Cadmus XP promoter? If you aren't live in Northwind by that date, what breaks operationally, and who owns that? Let's anchor the rollout backward from that show so we both know the must-decide-by date."
Next step to progress: Re-engage Ruaidhri directly to revive the deal and anchor a go-live deadline to the first committed concert date with the Cadmus XP promoter, then ask him to bring the Athletic Director (budget owner) into a dated working session where you quantify the cost of staying on the current spreadsheet workflow versus a Northwind rollout.
Critical Event (1.5, absent): no dated event with a forced consequence exists anywhere in the sequence. The buyer's 'concerts coming up' is a calendar cue with no date and no cost-of-delay, and the rep never pinned a go-live-by deadline to it. With no forcing function, this deal cannot forecast.
Prairie State Dept. of Agriculture / Prairie State Fair (Kingsford)Pricing / Negotiation
Prairie State Dept. of Agriculture / Prairie State Fair (Kingsford)Pricing / Negotiation
Deal risk, high: Late-stage finalist drifting 55 days with no close well past its stated two-week decision, no quantified Impact to justify the spend, explicit taxpayer-cost hesitation, single economic buyer (Cressida) absent at pricing, and IT governance status unknown.
Customer said"but it's all very manual. So, looking for some automated processes… looking for a bit more flexibility when it comes to the GPS and mapping"
Ronan Whitfield said"And when you talk about your current system being very manual. What's I'm sorry, I forgot, but what just for my notes? Again, what was the current system or systems that you have?"
Should have said"You mentioned everything is very manual today. If we automated those processes, what would that mean for your team in concrete terms, how many hours a week go into the manual mapping and reporting as it stands, and what else could those people be working on? What is that costing the fair each season?"
Next step to progress: Re-engage Milo and Cressida to co-build a dated mutual action plan that maps each required procurement and IT-governance signature backward from the late-October go-live (driven by the January 2027 fair-application window), and arm them with a one-page quantified Impact and cost-of-inaction brief (manual mapping and reporting hours, risk of the 25-year-old system failing during the August fair, time-to-value) so the unnamed signers can defend the spend to taxpayers.
Impact (2.0), across both calls Ronan asked ONE general pains/gains question but never a true impact question; buyer surfaced 'it's all very manual' and a 25-year-old failing system but with zero quantified business outcome, so by the pricing/SOW stage the deal sits at Pain-only with no ROI case the buyer can use to defend the spend to taxpayers.
Verano ArenaPricing / Negotiation
Verano ArenaPricing / Negotiation
Deal risk, high: Single-threaded deal dormant 61 days after pricing with the May 30 sign-by deadline now passed, no quantified ROI for the GM who demands payback proof, and no genuine Critical Event behind the date.
Customer said"Yeah, I think the timing will work out. So, but again, like I told you, I need to do the internal sale of this project, but I think the timing is fine. May thirtieth sounds awesome."
Ronan Whitfield said"Ronan took the soft agreement and let his own discount deadline stand in for a Critical Event, never probing what the summer go-live was tied to or what missing it would cost."
Should have said"What's driving summer for you specifically? Is there a concert season, a booking, or a board/budget date you need the system live for? And if you're still running the venue off Rosalind's spreadsheet when that lands, what does that cost you in lost or mishandled events?"
Next step to progress: Re-engage Kasper and co-build a one-page ROI and payback case the GM explicitly demanded, quantifying the cost of untracked lost bookings and rental overruns on unfulfilled riders, then use it to land a multi-threaded meeting with GM Idris and booking manager Rosalind that anchors a dated summer go-live as a real, buyer-owned Critical Event.
Critical Event (1.8): no real, dated, buyer-owned compelling event exists at the proposal/pricing stage. The only urgency is a seller-manufactured May 30 discount-expiry; the genuine pressure (the GM's 'show me the money / where I recover the investment' condition) is undated, and 'up and running in the summer' is a calendar cue with no consequence attached.
Trevor KingsleyTrevor Kingsley runs a strong front half of SPICED (Situation 4.1) but stalls on Critical Event and Impact. Coaching Critical Event first will move the most deals.
Ellsworth OrganizationDemo / Evaluation
Deal risk, medium: Recent activity (11 days since last call) but no Critical Event, unquantified Impact, single-threaded on Hollis, and the buyer stood up his own AI interim calendar and told the reps not to rush, draining urgency
Customer said"I'm already using mine, but what I, because what I don't want is to either rush you guys, if it makes sense to fully do something for us in the near term, we can take a bit more time and do it, right?"
Trevor Kingsley said"Got it. Yeah. Well, yeah. Let's jump in and see what we can pick up today."
Should have said"That makes sense, and I want to be sure we time this around your world instead of ours. You mentioned the leadership succession and that two windows really matter: the fall stop-clause window and the post-holiday January window. Which of those is the first decision you would hate to be making on the word document or your AI hack? If we anchor go-live to being ready ahead of that window, what is the latest we could start implementation and still have you live in time? That tells us both whether 'a little more time' means weeks or months, and what is actually at stake if we miss it."
Next step to progress: Book a working session to deliver the requested phased plan and pricing, and use it to co-create a Critical Event by tying go-live to a specific fall stop-clause booking-window decision Hollis cannot make on his Word doc or AI hack, while requiring his technically savvy second stakeholder to attend
Critical Event (1.5): no dated event with a real consequence forces a buy decision. The only timing signal ("by July") was soft and decayed further in Call 3 when Hollis stood up his own AI-built calendar as an interim fix and explicitly told the reps not to rush. The reps never surfaced or co-created a Critical Event, and even added seller-manufactured urgency ("love to lock this up fast") which does not count.
Other deals (16), click to inspect
Thornbury Cultural Center (City of Aldenwood, IL)Pricing / Negotiation
Thornbury Cultural Center (City of Aldenwood, IL)Pricing / Negotiation
Deal risk, medium: Active and warming with strong multi-threading and recent contact, but a late-stage pricing conversation still has weak unquantified Impact and the only Critical Event is a far-off December council vote with possible spend not until January 2027, so the deal can stall without a quantified savings case and a locked vote date.
Customer said"And also getting under that number. The reason I say we have to sell it is because that, that'll that's one of those things that we can walk into a council meeting and say we are going to say we are going to, we're going to charge. We're going to save this much a year and they'll just be like, yeah, do it just like, yeah, there's no process."
Trevor Kingsley said"Is that number dropping? Fine. Yeah."
Should have said"Let's put a real number on that for your council. You're running roughly $7 a ticket today across about 10,000 tickets, which is about $70K a year in fees. If we get you down to around $1 plus card, you're trimming that by something like $60K a year, and it grows as you absorb your renters' volume. That's the savings line you walk in with. Can we build that case together?"
Next step to progress: Build and deliver the quantified council savings case with Cyrus and Ignacio: convert the buyer's own roughly $7 per ticket on roughly 10,000 tickets per year (about $70K per year) into a roughly $60K per year savings line versus the roughly $1 plus card target, package it as the December council vote artifact, and lock a dated mutual next step tied to that vote as the Critical Event.
Impact (2.0, weak): only pain and an unfulfilled ask were surfaced, never a measurable business outcome. The buyer voiced personal frustration and even asked Trevor to produce a council savings number, but no quantified or directional business outcome was articulated, and Trevor never asked an impact question (what solving this would mean for the business, or what happens if they do not change), so this remains surfaced pain, not Impact.
Fenmore Art CenterDemo / Evaluation
Fenmore Art CenterDemo / Evaluation
Deal risk, medium: Active and multi-threaded (11 days since last, 6 calls in 90d), but stuck in repeated demos and status calls with no pricing or proposal, unquantified Impact, unranked criteria, and the July 1 go-live treated as a date rather than a committed Critical Event against four named competitors.
Customer said"Yeah. I mean, I need three screens just to schedule my team of five."
Trevor Kingsley said"Right, right. Yeah... take the load off everybody. Well, thanks for walking me through that. I appreciate it."
Should have said"Three screens for a five-person team is a real cost. Walk me through a normal scheduling week: how many hours does that cross-referencing consume per person, and across your team plus Halden's unionized team, what does it total in a month? If we collapse that into one source, what is that time worth back to you?"
Next step to progress: Book a dated working session with the facilities group to quantify the disconnected-systems Impact (hours per scheduling week across Georgiana's and Halden's unionized teams converted to dollars, plus the 92-page digest cost), confirm the July 1 fiscal-year-start go-live as the Critical Event with the final approver named above the group, then commit a date to present pricing and a proposal.
Pain surfaced but no measurable business Impact. The rep did ask the Impact question (twice in the demo, and once in discovery: why are these problems for you and what are they keeping you from achieving), so the gap is not that the question went unasked. The gap is that the buyer answered only with personal annoyance and efficiency feelings (three screens to schedule a team of five, streamline, be more efficient, saving time saving effort) and the rep accepted those without pushing into a measurable business consequence. No business outcome was articulated: no hours, no dollars, no lost revenue or rental capacity, no error or service measure tied to a business priority. The scale numbers in play (75 spaces, 2,000-3,000 events per year, 92-page digest, team of five) describe business size, the trap, not the cost of the problem. So Impact stays at pain only.
Whitestone-Ferndale ISD (WPAC)Pricing / Negotiation
Whitestone-Ferndale ISD (WPAC)Pricing / Negotiation
Deal risk, high: Hard May 30 purchasing deadline passed with no signature, three post-pricing status calls stalled the deal, single-threaded to a never-named procurement approver, and Impact stayed unquantified at proposal stage.
Customer said"if we can't bring on additional staff, which costs money, then we want to be more efficient with what we've got. So, if we can't hire that extra headcount, then at least we're able to intake more clients, more events with the staff we already have, right?"
Trevor Kingsley said"Okay. So if I'm understanding you correctly, having a better way to manage these events that's more effective and more efficient is going to let you grow event volume, better serve the customers you already have and serve more events in the venue as a whole."
Should have said"That's the crux. Let's put a number on it: what would one more full-time coordinator cost the district fully loaded, and how many staff-hours per week are the three of you losing right now to manual VenueTrack re-entry and copying between Outlook and Formstack? If we can show this tool gives back, say, X hours a week, that's the equivalent of part of a hire you never have to make, and that becomes the ROI case your procurement team needs."
Next step to progress: Reopen with the procurement budget owner by name (not just as a function) and reframe the proposal around quantified Impact, the avoided-hire cost and weekly staff-hours lost to manual VenueTrack re-entry, then drive to a signed sub-50K agreement inside the July purchasing window since the May 30 window closed.
Impact (3, solid, Meets): under the refined definition this clears Meets, not a gap. Trevor asked two real impact questions in Call 1 ('what positive benefits would a replacement bring' and 'what is the impact of doing nothing'), and the buyer articulated a measurable business outcome, intake more clients and events with existing staff and avoid an added-staff cost ('if we can't add additional staff, which costs money, then we'd like to be more efficient'). The remaining coaching edge is quantification: no dollar, hour, or lost-revenue number is ever attached, so it stops at a qualitative business outcome (3.0) and never reaches Strong (4.0). Convert the avoided-hire and wasted-hours into a number to build the ROI case against the $60K RFP threshold.
Steel City Symphony Orchestra (Harmon Hall)Stalled
Steel City Symphony Orchestra (Harmon Hall)Stalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled 116 days with zero calls in 90 days after a pricing call, with no forcing Critical Event, unquantified Impact at a late stage, and the capital/board gate apparently passed without movement.
Customer said"that to me is the whole goal is that we stop duplicating data entry... our communication about between the orchestra schedule and whatever she's working on is very analog... it mostly holds up because she and I are both pretty darn good on attention to detail, but it, there's risk in that"
Trevor Kingsley said"There's a concern around the current process tied to business continuity, right? If Linnea wins the lottery tomorrow and walks out the door... we want to cut manual effort because there's a lot of shifting this data over to here... it's time consuming and it's a low value task"
Should have said"That risk and that manual effort are exactly what we'd want to size. Roughly how many hours a week does Linnea spend re-keying the orchestra schedule into the venue system, and over a season, how often does an analog handoff slip and cost you a scramble or a double-book? If we put even a rough dollar or hours number on that, the investment case for the board gets far easier to defend."
Next step to progress: Re-engage Marcus with a dated proposal-refresh email that puts a number on the cost of delay, asking what the May board capital decision returned and proposing a 30-minute call to align the proposal to a concrete go-live event, closing the unquantified Impact and missing Critical Event before the next budget cycle slips.
Critical Event is now the lowest dimension (score 2.0): real dates exist (capital proposals due March 2, board budget approval in May, FY-end August) but none carry a forcing consequence or a co-created cost of delay, so a capital/board decision can drift a full budget cycle with no pressure to act.
Ravenscroft Arts CentreRecommendation / Proposal
Ravenscroft Arts CentreRecommendation / Proposal
Deal risk, medium: Single-threaded on Fitzgerald with no economic buyer engaged, Impact unquantified (2.0) and no Critical Event (2.0) at proposal stage, and Fitzgerald going on parental leave to one day a week through summer threatens to stall an otherwise warm deal.
Customer said"Fiadh, yeah, gets a yearly question from me that I have to, for pulling together information on shows that I have to hand to the Vinh auditors... So that's a task I already know goes away with this."
Trevor Kingsley said"Yeah. Well, you're saving a whole lot of time on some sort of task that would, you know, usually have taken you a few hours to pull together. I mean, that's pretty big."
Should have said"That's a great one to put a number on. Walk me through it: how many hours does that audit compile cost Fiadh each year, and what else falls off the calendar when settlement is split across four people front-of-house, back-of-house, box office, and booking? If we called it X hours per settlement across Y events a year, what is that worth in staff time annually? I want to carry a real cost figure into the proposal so finance sees what the problem costs you today alongside what the platform costs."
Next step to progress: Before Fitzgerald starts parental leave, run a short value-and-access call: quantify the eliminable annual BKLM/Vinh audit compile (hours per settlement times events per year times loaded rate) so the written proposal carries a cost-of-inaction, anchor a dated Critical Event to the provost space-allocation decision, and ask Fitzgerald to bring his boss and the new VP of Finance and Admin onto the proposal review so the budget owner sees the case directly.
Impact is pain only (2.0). The buyer surfaced real operational pain and even volunteered an eliminable recurring task (the annual BKLM audit compile), but never articulated a measurable business outcome, and the rep never asked an impact question (what would solving this mean to the business, to what extent is it important, what happens if you do not change). So a ~$85-90K three-year proposal is being assembled on anecdote, giving finance no cost-of-inaction to weigh against the price.
City of Marlowe (Marlowe Grand Theater)Pricing / Negotiation
City of Marlowe (Marlowe Grand Theater)Pricing / Negotiation
Deal risk, high: Late-stage deal that blew past its own May 31 sign-by, is single-threaded through Wilhelmina while the budget owner is unaware, has no quantified Impact anchor and no genuine Critical Event, and is drifting toward the Oct-1 fiscal default with budget already spent.
Customer said"we found that if the info we put in isn't particularly useful to them, it kind of turns into like a boy who cried wolf situation where they just stop checking it entirely"
Trevor Kingsley said"Yeah, perfect. Yeah. (Trevor acknowledges and moves along without quantifying the consequence)"
Should have said"That's a genuine risk. When the techs quit checking and a last-minute labor or equipment change slips through, what actually happens that night, do you wind up with overtime, a botched setup, a client refund, or a complaint to the city? About how often does that land on you, and what is the cost when it does?"
Next step to progress: Get Trevor into the room with Wilhelmina's boss Amara (the actual budget owner, who 'has no idea about anything about it') armed with a one-page, cost-neutral year-one business case that quantifies the operational Impact (missed labor/equipment changes, rework, overtime, city-reporting burden), so the deal is multi-threaded to the decider and the September renovation closure becomes a buyer-owned Critical Event with a real cutover deadline.
Impact (2.2), no impact question was asked across either call. The rep surfaced and narrated pain on the buyer's behalf ('you're paying a considerable amount for not a lot of value') but never asked what solving it would mean to the business, so real operational pain never became a measurable business outcome. At a pricing-negotiation stage, with no value anchor, this is the deal's most coachable gap.
The Merritt CenterStalled
The Merritt CenterStalled
Deal risk, high: 122 days dormant after a same-day-signature promise that never converted, with no Critical Event, an unmet finance approver, and the close resting on a single champion.
Customer said"we budgeted in the roughly 30 something 1,000 for the rest of this fiscal year"
Trevor Kingsley said"Right."
Should have said"That's helpful, so the budget is set aside for this fiscal year. What date are you working back from? Is there a point in your fiscal year, or a busy-season ramp, where you need Summit live and the team trained, or does the budget have to be committed by a certain date or you lose it?"
Next step to progress: Reach out to Desmond to confirm whether the updated contract was ever signed, then co-create a dated go-live tied to the busy event season and the fiscal-year budget window so the deal gets a real Critical Event, and confirm the director of finance has approved before re-locking the timeline.
Critical Event (1.5, weak): the deal reaches contract-signature with no dated event tied to a consequence. The only timing signals are a fiscal-year budget envelope (~$35K for the remainder of the fiscal year) and Desmond's voluntary same-day signature offer, both momentum cues, not a forcing function. Trevor accepted the close without surfacing or co-creating a real CE, so the implementation has no anchor and the timeline is unprotected.
Pinebluff Community College, HPAC (Hargrove Performing Arts Center)Demo / Evaluation
Pinebluff Community College, HPAC (Hargrove Performing Arts Center)Demo / Evaluation
Deal risk, medium: Only 11 days since the demo and emotional buy-in is high, but heading into proposal with unquantified Impact, no dated Critical Event, and explicit budget hesitation from a skeptical admin who will judge it on a numbers case that does not exist yet.
Customer said"Hi… I don't know. I mean, honestly, it's just there's times where I just fall behind like advancing things just."
Trevor Kingsley said"So you'd be able to keep more on top of, yeah, that's."
Should have said"You said all your income comes through rentals, and right now you're two months behind on advancing. If you got that time back and stayed ahead, could you take on more rentals or turn them faster? Roughly what's a rental booking worth to you, and how many are you leaving on the table while you're underwater? Let's put a number on what this costs the venue, instead of just your week."
Next step to progress: Book a dated working session within the next week to co-build the one-page admin business case, converting Torsten's rental backlog into quantified lost or at-risk rental revenue and hours, pin the Scenica contract expiry date as the deciding event, then issue the proposal tied to that date.
Impact is never quantified (band 2). Trevor asks the impact question but accepts vague answers and never converts buyer-owned pain into a measurable business outcome (lost rental revenue, hours lost), leaving the deal heading into proposal on surfaced pain alone, exactly the 'set of numbers for admin' the buyer says decides the deal.
Place des LumieresDemo / Evaluation
Place des LumieresDemo / Evaluation
Deal risk, medium: Warm single champion but no dated Critical Event, unquantified Impact, single-threaded on Aurelien, and a public RFP that was acknowledged yet never shaped or mapped, so a better-prepared competitor could win the formal bid.
Customer said"Where if we go, if we go with, we'll have to run a public, I'll call RFP… RFP. So there are rules around that, if too many people see that you won't be allowed, to apply on the RFP."
Trevor Kingsley said"Well, that's helpful to know as well."
Should have said"That's really helpful, Aurelien, thank you. Two things I'd like to understand so we can plan together: what typically triggers the RFP to actually launch, and is it tied to a date or a budget cycle? For instance, does it need approval within a fiscal year, or before a board or budget window closes? And once it launches, by when would you need a system live, and what happens to your team if SharePoint is still the system of record at that point? I want to make sure we're building toward a real date that matters to you, rather than whenever it happens."
Next step to progress: Book a scoping call with Aurelien to map the RFP timeline and procurement stakeholders (who issues, scores, and signs above him), anchor the RFP to a fiscal or budget date to manufacture a Critical Event, and tie one quantified Impact (hours saved across 1,000 shows, cost of staying on SharePoint) into the requirements so Northwind shapes the criteria before the bid is issued.
Critical Event (1.5): no dated event with a forcing consequence exists anywhere in the two-call sequence. The buyer actively suppressed urgency ('midterm,' 'change fatigue,' timeline 'depends on so many things'), and the one structural driver that did surface, a public RFP, was acknowledged but never anchored to a date or decide-by consequence. Trevor probed timeline once, accepted the deflection, and never returned to co-create a timeline driver, so the deal floats with no forcing function heading into a formal bid.
Halloran UniversityStalled
Halloran UniversityStalled
Deal risk, high: 108 days dormant with no calls in 90 days and no proposal call ever materialized, single-threaded to the two coordinators with no access to economic buyer Ignacio, no Critical Event, and unquantified Impact heading into pricing.
Customer said"Honestly, two months, yeah, we were hoping to move like a week, yeah, to."
Trevor Kingsley said"Make a call on buying a new product and getting through a contract process inside two months time. Yeah. So that by the end of April, you're beginning to move ahead with onboarding a new product?"
Should have said"That two-month target is useful, though help me understand what's driving it. Is it tied to your new sales and marketing hire starting? If they arrive without a system in place, what does that cost you in ramp time or lost bookings across their first quarter? That gives us a real reason to land the decision by a specific date instead of letting it drift."
Next step to progress: Send Elsbeth and Elodie a re-engagement note that references the new sales and marketing hire's start date as a cost-of-delay anchor, requests the still-owed annual event-volume number, and proposes a proposal review that includes Ignacio so the quote lands in front of the economic buyer with a dated consequence and a quantified ROI rather than drifting again.
Critical Event (2.2): no dated event with a real consequence exists. The buyer's 'two months / by end of April' is a soft, rep-elicited target and the new sales/marketing hire is an unconverted business driver, so the deal heads to proposal with nothing forcing the decision.
Museum of Fine Arts, Calder CityDemo / Evaluation
Museum of Fine Arts, Calder CityDemo / Evaluation
Deal risk, high: 52 days dormant after the demo with the deal already drifting toward the buyer's self-predicted 12-month bucket, no Critical Event, unquantified Impact, and a skeptical, unengaged director as final decision maker.
Customer said"it might take me 12 months to get something pushed through sure. But the tides are going to turn whether that's this year or next year. So I just, I want to line up what's happening... I've had it go where I'm sitting in a budget meeting and it's a big enough problem. And Maeve has enough pull that they might just go. Yeah, do it."
Trevor Kingsley said"Well, I, yeah, I appreciate the transparency for sure. And yeah, I think we're aligned in terms of wanting to respect one another's time... understanding that this could take a few cycles to work through the conversation."
Should have said"Ferris handed Trevor the exact ingredients of a Critical Event and Trevor accepted the 12-month drift instead of sharpening it. Ideal: probe the forcing function. 'You said a big-enough problem in the budget meeting could get an instant yes. What would have to be true by the March 11-24 cycle for that to happen this year instead of next? And Rosalie described emergency VenueTrack remediation just to keep it alive, what does that cost you every month it limps along, and what breaks if it fails before a replacement is in?' That ties the dated budget window to a real consequence and gives the buyer a reason to decide by a date instead of drifting a year."
Next step to progress: Re-engage Ferris and Rosalie to pull the promised event-volume and category data, then deliver a written budgetary proposal wrapped in a quantified business case that ties the 700K-to-1M rental revenue gap and the monthly cost of the failing VenueTrack to the budget cycle, and book a dated executive review with COO Adrian Petrovic to co-create a decision date.
Critical Event (2.5), no dated decision-forcing event exists. The only dated anchor is the buyer-surfaced March 11-24 budget cycle, but Ferris explicitly defuses it ("a non project today," "it might take me 12 months to push something through"). Missing the window defers the deal ~a year rather than forcing a decision. The richest unused anchor, Rosalie's "emergency remediation... just to stay alive... CPR" on a failing VenueTrack, was never tied to a dated decision point.
Kingsbridge MuseumStalled
Kingsbridge MuseumStalled
Deal risk, high: Dormant 103 days since the demo with no pricing or proposal, single-threaded to a recommender team that admits the decision is above them, no Critical Event and an unvalidated ROI case at a post-demo stage.
Customer said"we're doing this research for our next fiscal year. So that would kick off July one. So if we could have something to sort of gather and brainstorm on across the rest of this fiscal year to hopefully roll out by next fiscal year, that would be ideal."
Trevor Kingsley said"Okay. So earliest would be a July one purchase... if you were to land on a solution that worked for you and get through that process and contract and be ready to onboard in July, would that like the rest of summer, early fall stretch be a good time for you to implement"
Should have said"So July 1 is when next year's budget opens. Walk me through what has to be true by then: when does the budget request reach your CFO, and what happens to those rentals you are already turning away if July passes and you head into another gala season without this in place? I want us working back from a date that actually costs you something if it slips, rather than an ideal window."
Next step to progress: Re-open with a multi-threaded, ROI-anchored outreach: deliver a one-page ROI that quantifies the roughly 50K dollars of already-turned-away rentals plus building-wide efficiency, and request a working session with economic buyer CFO/COO Rutherford alongside the director of special events and director of development, explicitly tied to the July 1 next-fiscal-year budget window so a real Critical Event and a path to power are established before another gala cycle absorbs the team.
Critical Event (2.0, weak): two calls in there is still no dated event tied to a real consequence forcing a decision. The buyer has a preferred window (July 1 / next fiscal year, early-summer go-live) but no must-decide-by date with a penalty for slipping. Budget is not earmarked, the decision routes up to an unengaged CFO/COO, and gala season is actively pushing the cadence out. The only thing resembling a consequence, ~$60K of rentals already turned away, is an undated ongoing bleed that functions as Impact, not a deadline.
Rivergate OperaStalled
Rivergate OperaStalled
Deal risk, high: Sixty days silent at the funding gate after a scheduled CFO call that never logged, on a late-stage deal carried by one champion with Impact never quantified, so warmth is outrunning a decision that may have stalled.
Customer said"it would be a giant step forward for us if any time a bid got accepted... we, you know, it was set up so it automatically emailed that over to finance like that would be a giant step forward."
Trevor Kingsley said"Trevor agreed and immediately shifted into describing the feature ('I can imagine a world to your point... the finance team member automatically gets an email notification'), narrating product capability instead of quantifying the buyer's outcome."
Should have said"Put a number on the outcome the buyer just raised: 'When you say a giant step forward, help me quantify it. How much time does your team burn today manually getting bids over to finance, across how many people, and what does breaking that silo really save or unlock each month?' That turns a qualitative efficiency into a measurable business Impact he can carry into the CFO conversation."
Next step to progress: Re-engage champion Kealan now to revive and reschedule the CFO (Ottilie/Financial One) funding-and-timing call, and walk in with a quantified Impact case (hours saved auto-routing accepted bids to finance, cost of the summer-onboarding window slipping) to defend price, settle the funding mechanism, and lock a signed start date.
Impact (2.5, weak): across all four calls the rep never asks a single impact/diagnostic question; business value exists only as a secondhand offline 'business case' plus vague 'efficiencies' with zero quantified outcome, so a closing-stage deal carries no visible value to defend price against in the upcoming CFO call. All urgency is seller-manufactured ('time kills all deals') rather than anchored in the buyer's quantified cost-of-inaction.
GAPA (Glenport Association for the Performing Arts)Demo / Evaluation
GAPA (Glenport Association for the Performing Arts)Demo / Evaluation
Deal risk, medium: Single-threaded on a new-in-role lone decider with no dated Critical Event and unquantified Impact as the deal moves toward pricing, and the latest contact is a low-signal other call, so momentum is cooling even though dormancy at 20 days is not yet the problem.
Customer said"I do want to make it a priority that within… the next six months, we've identified a direction we want to go. We are committed."
Trevor Kingsley said"How do you see that vision? What's your outlook on it, Everard?"
Should have said"Six months to a committed direction, that's useful. What's driving that particular window, is it tied to one of the new theater openings, a budget cycle, or competitive pressure from Calderon? And what happens to the operation if you're still running stagevista and spreadsheets past that point? I want to be sure we hit what matters before that date arrives."
Next step to progress: Book a multi-threaded working session that pulls in the budget owner and the other stakeholders Everard said must buy in, and use it to quantify the tour revenue GAPA is losing to Calderon and pin the decision to a dated driver (the seventh and eighth theater openings or the six-month committed-direction window) before sending the quote, so the proposal lands against a forcing function rather than into a single-threaded, unquantified deal.
Critical Event (2.0): the deal has reached pricing/timeline talk yet has no dated event with a forced consequence. The buyer's 'within the next six months' is a self-imposed planning goal he explicitly defuses ('we're not in a rush here'), and the nearest real driver (Calderon/Glenport State pulling tour business) is undated and never tied to the software decision. The rep had a clean opening to pin the driver and pivoted to an open vision question instead.
Alta Valley University, Norwood Center for the Performing ArtsVerbal / Closing
Alta Valley University, Norwood Center for the Performing ArtsVerbal / Closing
Deal risk, medium: Active and warm (last call 5 days ago, exec and Osmond on board), but a late-stage deal carrying no quantified Impact and no consequence-bearing Critical Event, riding on a DX and procurement gate the champion himself compared to an 18-month process, so the August go-live can slip.
Customer said"We feel like it has enough of the right tools we're looking for to make our lives easier and handle the things we need it to do."
Trevor Kingsley said"That's good. Any notable limitations or issues you saw in the demo. Any concerns yet?"
Should have said"That's great to hear. When you say 'make our lives easier,' help me size it: across Beatrix, Ferris and Fitzgerald, how many hours a week are you losing today to the manual re-entry and double-booking checks, and what does a missed availability or a duplicated booking actually cost you in lost rental revenue or staff overtime? If we take that away, what would solving it be worth to the Norwood Center over a year?"
Next step to progress: Send Fitzgerald the restructured line-itemed two-year quote and co-build a dated mutual action plan that locks contract-submission and signature dates to the August go-live as a real Critical Event, attaching a quantified Impact (hours per week saved across Beatrix, Ferris and Fitzgerald plus rental revenue recovered from filling dark inventory) so he has a P&L justification to push through DX and procurement rather than just a price under 50K.
Impact (score 2): across both calls Trevor never asks a single impact question and no AVU buyer names a measurable business outcome, no hours saved, cost saved, or rental revenue recovered, so the deal is advancing into pricing and procurement on returning-customer familiarity and an intuitive UI rather than quantified value, leaving the champion no P&L justification to push through DX and procurement and forcing the rep into discount-and-shrink-the-term pricing instead of value-based pricing.
Thicket Forward / Thicket Theater campusRecommendation / Proposal
Thicket Forward / Thicket Theater campusRecommendation / Proposal
Deal risk, medium: A hot, multi-threaded deal cooled into status calls 34 days ago with Impact still unquantified, no mapped decision or signer, and no firm proposal anchored to the Nov 1 opening, so it risks slipping past its window.
Customer said"ultimately this replaces five separate softwares, you know, that's the goal everything in one spot and it lets us be able to have some sort of cross functionality from a participation standpoint in a planning standpoi"
Trevor Kingsley said"The rep had already jumped to ballpark pricing and read the five-softwares line as proof of value; he agreed with the consolidation benefit and never asked what consolidating those systems would really save or unlock for the business."
Should have said"That's exactly the goal. When you collapse those five systems into one, what does that free up for your team, in hours per week or in cost each month? And once every event lives on one calendar with finance attached, what does that let you do, run more events, settle shows faster, that you can't do today?"
Next step to progress: Book a working session with the economic buyer and finance lead to quantify the five-software consolidation into hours and dollars saved, tie that Impact to the Nov 1 grand-opening go-live as the critical event, and confirm who signs and by when before sending or revising the formal proposal.
Impact (2/weak): across two calls the rep never asked a single impact question. The buyer's strongest business statement, 'ultimately this replaces five different softwares... everything in one place,' was affirmed but never quantified into hours, cost, or revenue, so the deal sits at proposal stage with no measurable business outcome to justify the 15-30k annual + implementation investment.
Curtis VanceCurtis Vance runs a strong front half of SPICED (Situation 3.1) but stalls on Impact and Critical Event. Coaching Impact first will move the most deals.
Willowmere Golf Club (Willowmere Heights Park District)Stalled
Deal risk, high: Stalled and single-threaded, 53 days dark after two no-shows, with no Pain, Impact, Critical Event, or Decision surfaced anywhere in the sequence.
Customer said"I can take a look at this demo and you let me know what works best for you since you'll be away for a bit."
Curtis Vance said"Yeah. Let's see, you know tomorrow is actually pretty wide open. Do you, are you in the office tomorrow? Would you have any time then?"
Should have said"Before we lock in the time, can I ask what prompted you to look at this to begin with? What's not working today at Willowmere that you'd want a system like ours to solve? Even one or two pain points will let me tailor that pre-recorded demo to what actually matters to you."
Next step to progress: Send Marlys a short pattern-interrupt email that offers a clear self-select choice (re-engage now, pause to a set date, or close out) and asks one Pain-anchored question about what prompted the Willowmere search, while simultaneously prospecting a second Park District stakeholder to break single-threading; if no response in one week, cleanly disqualify and reallocate.
Impact is absent: the buyer never surfaced even emotional pain, let alone a measurable business consequence, and the rep never asked an impact question. Discovery never happened. Across all three calls the customer never described her business, named a problem, or surfaced a single cost, criterion, decision-maker, or deadline. The scheduled discovery call and the demo-feedback sync were both no-shows, so Pain, Impact, Critical Event, Decision Criteria, and Decision Process all sit at the floor (1) and the deal is single-threaded to one unconfirmed contact who has gone dark.
Other deals (3), click to inspect
RMG (reseller) / TSI (end customer)Stalled
RMG (reseller) / TSI (end customer)Stalled
Deal risk, high: Dormant 81 days past its own end-of-March decision and now past the July 1 go-live, decisive demo ended with no dated next step, Impact never quantified, and the Critical Event was partner-asserted not buyer-owned.
Customer said"They initially when we rolled this out, they were fine with the visual aspect you get from it, but then the form they sacrificed the form and it never, it's always been like a complaint of theirs."
Curtis Vance said"Sure. Sure. No, that totally makes sense. And, I could definitely see some hang ups there. Yeah. I mean, Curtis, I know you had some questions as well."
Should have said"A complaint that has been with them since you implemented this is exactly what we want to fix. Help me put a number on it so the client sees the cost of carrying that broken form: roughly how many event or room requests go through it each month, how much admin time does each one take to chase down or correct, and how often does a wrong setup or double-book actually occur because the form could not capture the right details? Even a rough figure shows us what the status quo has been costing them each quarter."
Next step to progress: Reopen with the RMG partner (Ilaria) and push for a direct working session with TSI's decision owner (Maelle) to quantify the cost of the broken status quo, events per year, admin hours per request, and double-book or wrong-setup frequency, then re-anchor a buyer-owned go-live date and lock a dated path from internal discussion to signature.
Impact is the lowest dimension (2.0). Across both calls the buyer surfaced real pain (a six-year standing complaint, a sacrificed form, 'grasping for a good tool') but never a measurable business outcome, no time saved, cost avoided, revenue, or efficiency consequence to TSI. The rep validated the pain ('that totally makes sense') but never asked an impact question (what solving it would mean, what happens if they do not change, to what extent it matters), so the deal sits on surfaced pain plus solution price, not a costed business case, ahead of the decision.
BRIX (Lakeshore Central Depot/Transline + BRIX@Orbit global)Discovery
BRIX (Lakeshore Central Depot/Transline + BRIX@Orbit global)Discovery
Deal risk, high: 68 days dormant with no demo or recommendation logged, single-threaded through low-authority champions, no Critical Event and no quantified Impact, so the higher-value Orbit opportunity is stalling right after front-half SPICED peaked.
Customer said"Their budget season falls in Q3. And so I'd assume it would line up. I mean, they just went through this huge transition with brix. They're forever saying we don't have opex, we don't have capex, and then the next budget season rolls around and all of a sudden, you know, things are moving. So just flagging the timeline for you and trying to be as transparent as I can so that you guys can build out your own time as needed to."
Curtis Vance said"Have they set aside budget for this? Like, do you know if this is like a project that they've said, hey, in the next budget cycle, we're going to be requesting opex and, or capex for just, you know, something like this or is it kind of a?"
Should have said"Q3 budget season is helpful. To make sure we are ready for it: is there a specific date in Q3 when budget locks, and what happens to the Orbit global rollout if a tool has not been selected before that window closes? Put another way, if this slips past Q3, does the project wait a full cycle, or do they fall back to building in-house again?"
Next step to progress: Re-engage Gideon the BRIX@Orbit middleman to confirm whether the Thursday Orbit client demo happened, then push to name and reach the real Orbit economic buyer and co-create a Critical Event by tying the Q3 budget lock to a dated consequence if no tool is selected before the window closes.
Critical Event (1.5): no dated event with a real consequence forcing a decision exists on either opportunity. The only timeline markers are calendar cue words ("budget season is in Q3," hedged) and buyer-urgency language ("they want everything tomorrow"), none of which carry a forced consequence. The rep probed timing repeatedly but never surfaced or co-created a CE.
Beacon Dining USA (Vista/Fern, Landmark Mutual RFP)Recommendation / Proposal
Beacon Dining USA (Vista/Fern, Landmark Mutual RFP)Recommendation / Proposal
Deal risk, medium: Active recent RFP (23 days since last call) but single-threaded to Seraphine, Impact unquantified at proposal stage, Landmark Mutual decider unmapped, and award sits on the customer's external Aug/Sep clock.
Customer said"I know we can get a visitor registration system through ServiceNow. And I want to push for them to get that built so that again, they can cut down the number of systems they have hanging off their network, right? That's always everybody's ultimate goal because it's so costly."
Curtis Vance said"Totally. Yeah. I'm following you for sure. And I should mention to your question, we do have an open API."
Should have said"That consolidation point is huge, let's put a number on it. Today they're running SlotKeeper and FeastLine, plus ServiceNow. Roughly what does that current stack run them annually in licenses, and how much planner/admin time goes into working across those systems? If Northwind retires two of those tools at three main hubs, what's that worth per year? That number will carry your section of the RFP much further than the software quote will."
Next step to progress: Before filing the RFP, quantify Impact by getting Seraphine the cost-of-systems ROI number (current SlotKeeper plus FeastLine license spend and planner hours, annual value of consolidating two tools across three hubs) to anchor the proposal, and use that call to map the Landmark Mutual decider and scoring beyond single-threaded Seraphine.
Impact (2.0, pain only) is the lowest dimension. The buyer surfaced real consolidation pain framed as cost ('reduce the number of systems... it's so costly,' 'everybody's ultimate goal'), but never an actual measurable business outcome, and the rep never asked an impact question. Curtis pivoted to a feature (open API) instead of asking what consolidating SlotKeeper and FeastLine is worth in license spend or planner hours per year. Every number in the sequence is business-size (event counts, headcounts, square footage) or solution-price, not cost-of-problem, so the RFP has no ROI anchor and Impact cannot reach Meets.
Living Playbook
Celebrate what is working, then carry it into coaching. The top performers are below. Under them is the exact move that turns each stalled dimension around, modeled on a real deal so you can teach it to the rest of the team.
Top performers
| Rep | Manager | Overall | S | P | I | CE | D | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Trevor Kingsley | Bianca Feld | 3.1 | 4.1 | 3.7 | 2.4 | 2.2 | 3.2 |
| 2 | Marco Delgado | Colleen Marchetti | 2.9 | 3.8 | 3.8 | 2.0 | 2.1 | 2.9 |
| 3 | Devon Ashcroft | Colleen Marchetti | 2.9 | 3.9 | 3.6 | 2.1 | 1.8 | 3.2 |
| 4 | Emil Zaborowski | Warren Okafor | 2.9 | 3.9 | 3.9 | 2.1 | 1.9 | 2.6 |
| 5 | Ronan Whitfield | Bianca Feld | 2.8 | 3.8 | 3.4 | 2.2 | 2.0 | 2.8 |
| 6 | Simone Keating | Warren Okafor | 2.8 | 3.6 | 3.1 | 2.1 | 2.2 | 3.0 |
| 7 | Priya Raghavan | Warren Okafor | 2.8 | 3.7 | 3.4 | 2.1 | 1.8 | 2.8 |
Lower performers are coached privately by name in the Coaching tab, not ranked here.
The move to coach, modeled on a real deal
Impact
- Trevor Kingsley, Whitestone-Ferndale ISD (WPAC)"That's the crux. Let's put a number on it: what would one more full-time coordinator cost the district fully loaded, and how many staff-hours per week are the three of you losing right now to manual VenueTrack re-entry and copying between Outlook and Formstack? If we can show this tool gives back, say, X hours a week, that's the equivalent of part of a hire you never have to make, and that becomes the ROI case your procurement team needs."Listen to this call
- Emil Zaborowski, River Bend Sentinels / Longbow Events (Northwind renewal)"That re-sending of complete updates rather than just the changes, how much time does it cost your team per event, and across how many events and people? If the change tracker eliminated that, what would it free your team up to do, and is that worth more to the business than the 7,500 list price?"Listen to this call
- Trevor Kingsley, Rivergate Opera"Put a number on the outcome the buyer just raised: 'When you say a giant step forward, help me quantify it. How much time does your team burn today manually getting bids over to finance, across how many people, and what does breaking that silo really save or unlock each month?' That turns a qualitative efficiency into a measurable business Impact he can carry into the CFO conversation."Listen to this call
Critical Event
- Ronan Whitfield, North Cascade State Fair"So if October is the realistic go-live and we lose August to the fair, that means contracting has to be signed by roughly mid-July. Walk me through what happens to your 2027 booking season if you're still on spreadsheets and merge docs when promoters start signing 2027 contracts in September, what does that cost you in missed inventory or overbooking? Let's anchor the board ask to that date and that consequence."Listen to this call
- Trevor Kingsley, Museum of Fine Arts, Calder City"Ferris handed Trevor the exact ingredients of a Critical Event and Trevor accepted the 12-month drift instead of sharpening it. Ideal: probe the forcing function. 'You said a big-enough problem in the budget meeting could get an instant yes. What would have to be true by the March 11-24 cycle for that to happen this year instead of next? And Rosalie described emergency VenueTrack remediation just to keep it alive, what does that cost you every month it limps along, and what breaks if it fails before a replacement is in?' That ties the dated budget window to a real consequence and gives the buyer a reason to decide by a date instead of drifting a year."Listen to this call
- Trevor Kingsley, Halloran University"That two-month target is useful, though help me understand what's driving it. Is it tied to your new sales and marketing hire starting? If they arrive without a system in place, what does that cost you in ramp time or lost bookings across their first quarter? That gives us a real reason to land the decision by a specific date instead of letting it drift."Listen to this call
Decision
- Emil Zaborowski, Barrow-Lindqvist Inc. (BLI Expo)"Who actually signs that renewal, Alban or the officers? What exactly would they need to see, and by when, to commit to another three years rather than one? And could I meet with them directly so I'm solving for the people holding the decision?"Listen to this call
Quick Wins, by manager
One move per team, aimed at the skill gap that lifts the most deals. Each button builds a 60 minute team run of show in your own Claude.
Colleen Marchetti
Team gaps: Critical Event 1.9Impact 1.9
This team's fastest win is closing Critical Event. Run one 60 minute team session on it, then coach it deal by deal in 1:1s.
Warren Okafor
Team gaps: Critical Event 1.9Impact 2.1
This team's fastest win is closing Critical Event. Run one 60 minute team session on it, then coach it deal by deal in 1:1s.
Bianca Feld
Team gaps: Critical Event 2.1Impact 2.3
This team's fastest win is closing Critical Event. Run one 60 minute team session on it, then coach it deal by deal in 1:1s.
How It Works
How these scores were produced, what the rubric is, and what Meets versus Exceeds means. Every score is grounded in a verbatim quote from the rep's own calls.
105
Deals scored
Genuine sales-cycle deals across the three managers and their 10 named reps, scored from their own Gong call transcripts. Customer-success and status calls were routed out of the scoring.
9
Specialist scorers per deal
One single-purpose AI specialist per dimension (Situation, Pain, Impact, Critical Event, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Engagement) plus a Sentiment and a Call-Structure specialist, then a rollup and an adversarial verifier.
3.0
The Meets line
SPICED is scored across the whole deal, not a single call. A 3.0 means the element is clearly present and grounded in the buyer's own words. Below 3.0 is a gap.
The scoring method
Each deal's full sequence of sales-cycle calls is read by the nine specialists. Each scores its dimension 1 to 5 on the SPICED rubric, scoring what was actually said, never what was implied, with a verbatim quote behind every score. A rollup synthesizes the deal's rolling SPICED state, and an adversarial verifier checks that every quote appears in the transcript and that the two trap dimensions were applied correctly.
Note. Impact is the cost of the problem, never the size of the business. Critical Event is a dated event with a consequence, never a calendar cue word.
What the bands mean
| Band | Score | Meaning | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Below expectations | under 3.0 | The element is missing or unfounded | Coach now. This is the priority. |
| Meets expectations | 3.0 to 3.9 | Present and grounded, but not yet strong | Reinforce so it does not slip. |
| Exceeds expectations | 4.0 and up | Specific, quantified where it should be, confirmed | Bank it. Use as an example for others. |
A 3.0 is not a failure, it means the rep did the job. The goal is consistent 3s and above across all five dimensions, then lifting the ones that drag.
How Impact, Critical Event, and Decision are scored
These three are where deals stall, so here is exactly what each band sounds like on a call.
| Dimension | Approaching, under 3.0 | Meets, 3.0 to 3.9 | Exceeds, 4.0 and up |
|---|---|---|---|
| Impact | Only emotional or personal pain ("it is insanity"), or a generic wish ("grow more"). No measurable business outcome, and the rep never asks an impact question. | The buyer names a measurable business outcome: time or cost saved, more revenue, or customer experience like CSAT or NPS, even without a hard number yet. | That outcome is quantified with a credible number tied to the pain, for example "from 8 to 14 percent by year end" or "10 hours a week across 3 staff". |
| Critical Event | A date or timeline is mentioned but with no consequence, or the urgency is seller-manufactured ("prices go up"). | A dated event with a real consequence, surfaced by the buyer ("the board approves budget on March 1 and we go dark after"). | The dated event and its consequence are confirmed and drive a mutually agreed timeline and next steps. |
| Decision | Single-threaded through one friendly contact, with no view of who really decides or how. | The core decision process and criteria are surfaced and the real approver is named. | Criteria, process, budget owner, and approval path are mapped, multi-threaded, with a mutual decision plan and dates. |
What is real and what is roadmap
The scores, the evidence quotes, the org and the rep names are real, from Northwind's own calls. Deal stage and deal risk are inferred from the transcripts and the real call recency. Account is used as the deal proxy until the live Gong to Snowflake feed carries the CRM opportunity id and win/loss outcomes, at which point the stages, the risk, and an outcome view become CRM-true.